Immigration worked as a time machine, bringing up little islands of the past into the present. - Kim Stanley Robinson

This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the understanding of one single thing, thus truly tasting how knowledge is accomplished, would then recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing.

Michael was so stubbornly optimistic that it made him stupid sometimes, or at least painful to be around.

After every revolution there is an interregnum, in which communities run themselves and all is well, and then the new regime comes in and screws things up.