By the standards of the dim past they were appallingly ugly; but by the standards of her especial planet and her especial era they were not ugly. The… - Wasp

Yes or no? Yes meant military victory, power and fear. No meant—what? Well, no meant a display of reasonableness in lieu of stubbornness. No meant a considerable change of mind. It struck him suddenly that one must possess redoubtable force of character to throw away a long-nursed viewpoint and adopt a new one. It required moral courage. The weak and the faltering could never achieve it.

She was of her own kind and it was a life form old in experience and remarkably astute. It had faced the inevitable a thousand times before and had learned the futility of battering against it head-on. It knew what to do with an immovable object: one climbs over it or burrows under it or sneaks around it. Once uses one’s brains because they are there to be used.
Inevitability was not to be feared.
That which cannot be stayed must be avoided with skill and ingenuity.

Time—the older you get the faster it goes.