Conquerors live by conquest; the first failure is a signal for the conquered to rise against them. - Jack Williamson

“There are the troops and their commanders, the technicians, the laborers, and many other classes. All of them have different desires and different ideas about how to gain them. Multiply this by the number of worlds in the Empire and you have a conflict of interests which can never be reconciled.”
“But isn’t that inefficient?” Wendre asked.
“It is indeed. But inefficiency is one of the penalties of freedom. You can’t be efficient unless you can force people into channels and make them go where they don’t want to go.”

“What’s wrong with him, Matal?” Wendre said dazedly. “He wants to kill us all.”
“Power,” Wu said somberly, stepping back from the car, “is a vision that drives men mad.”

Creation.…
It is its own nemesis. Success is temporary, and idolization will not make the ephemeral permanent. Decay is implicit in the birth of any organism.
An empire is an organism.