I’m arguing with myself and I can’t tell who’s winning. - Keith Laumer

Foster shook his head. “The inherent inertia of the human mind,” he said. “How it fights to resist new ideas.”

Less than total control is no control at all. You will obey my instructions, Mr. Ravel. In every detail. Or I will scrap the project.

The last burst picked me up and threw me a thousand miles into an open grave and the mud showered down on me and a giant tombstone fell out of the sky to mark the place, but I didn’t care any more, because I was far away, in that place where the heroes and the cowards lie together with a fine impartiality, waiting for eternity to pass, slowly, like a procession of snails creeping across an endless desert toward a distant line of mountains. (p. 18)