Most Christians know next to nothing about the life and teachings of Christ and are afraid to learn, sensing that the knowledge will upset their prec… - Gene Wolfe

If you rob someone who would help you if you needed help you only rob yourself. [...] Do you imagine you can be cruel without teaching others to be cruel to you?

Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood. For as long as anyone tries to hold on to the advantages of childhood—the freedom from responsibility, principally—while seeking to lay claim to the best parts of adulthood, such as independence, he is an adolescent. [...] Eventually most people choose to be adults, or are forced into it. A very few retreat into childhood and never leave it again. A large number remain adolescents for life.

They based their extrapolations on numbers. That worked as long as money, which is easily measured numerically, was the principle motivating force in human affairs. But as time progressed, human actions became responsive instead to a multitude of incommensurable vectors.