"What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered. - Ursula K. Le Guin

Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not.

Hughes, who had entered the space program from astrophysics, came with a very good record, in fact a brilliant one. This troubled many of his military superiors, to whom high intelligence was a code word for instability and insubordination.

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.