Routine was what kept the darkness at bay, when anything did. - James S. A. Corey

You're not picking a fight with the things that made the protomolecule. You're picking a fight with whatever killed them. Orders of magnitude above the things that were orders of magnitude above us. You've got to know this is going to escalate if we keep using these technologies.
We were always going to keep using these technologies. That was inevitable the moment we opened the gates," Duarte said. "If you've studied any history at all, you know that. Never in human history have we discovered something useful and then chosen not to use it.

He told himself that, but he was getting less and less persuasive. Not knowing was the worst thing. The second-worst thing as being chased by a bunch of top-of-the-line warships that really wanted to kill you.

The holy fool who’d dragged the solar system into war and seemed utterly blind to the damage he caused. An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was.