We don’t break rules, but we bend the hell out of them. - Larry Niven

It takes a lot of people to hold civilization together; some of us are only here to ask the right questions.

Perhaps the lines of nationalism and factionalism and every other goddamn “ism” in the world had reduced the chances for this weary planet. Or not. Nuclear devices had existed for over a century, and only four of them had ever been used in anger. This could be interpreted as proof of divine intervention, good luck, a sign that the human race was growing up, or ominous portent, depending upon one’s standing in the “half-empty, half-full” school of cocktail-party philosophy.

Was he deadpan because he didn’t care anymore? How much boredom can you meet in three hundred years?