Nadia shook her head, marveling at the capacity people had for ignoring what they had in common, and fighting bitterly over whatever small difference… - Kim Stanley Robinson

“Yeah yeah. We’d better call a meeting then,” Peter said, looking as annoyed at her as she felt at him.
“Yeah yeah,” Ann said heavily. Meetings. But they had their uses; people could assume they meant something, while the real work went on elsewhere.

We’ve moved beyond our ability to understand our technology.

You could never teach other people anything that mattered. The important things they had to learn for themselves, almost always by making mistakes, so that the lessons arrived too late to help. Experience was in that sense useless. It was precisely what could not be passed along in a lesson or an equation.