I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prev… - Fred Hoyle

However, there is one respect in which the human species has shown not the slightest originality—its excessive reproductive vigor.

One could conceive of other abstract systems, the consequences of which could be calculated, without it being necessary to provide a realization in actual material terms. We can conceive of other universes without those universes being compelled to exist. This indeed is the business of the pure mathematician.

The attitude of the conservative is basically wrong: change should not be opposed. Not in a root and branch sense. What the conservatives should demand and insist on is that any projected changes should be reversible. The deadly changes are those which are irreversible, like the British introducing Greeks into Cyprus. Or like taking the sparrow and the rabbit to Australia. So long as a projected change can be shown to be reversible there should be no very serious objection to making a tryout. If the first step along the new road turns out well, the second step can be made, but if it turns out badly one simply retreats to where one was before. This seems to me to be the essential principle of social change.