Are we in a dream?" Lebret asked. "Might we actually be dead and in some afterlife?" "How could we test either supposition?" the scientist asked, wit… - Adam Roberts

Nobody can overthrow the fascist dictator by being nicer than him. The reason for this is: by definition everybody is always already nicer than the fascist dictator.

She didn’t have to believe the technology existed. She only had to believe that people believed the technology existed. People, being stupid, believed all sorts of things.

It's not right. A human being is a human being. A human being is not a toy."
"We cannot help but use the people below us as a resource, my love," said her two MOHmies, as one. "That is what it means to be in power. Your choice is to relinquish power forever, or to accept that and use people for good."...
"If we are powerful," sang her MOHmies, "we can make things better, but we are made unclean by the fact that we have power. If we are powerless we remain clean, but we cannot make things better.