He’s just an ambitious young beta male with delusion of alphahood. He wants power and double rations, is all. This whole thing stinks of primate poli… - Michael Swanwick

Urban life was thus founded upon the principle of deliberately confounding those who were not a part of it. Civilization was a strategy of exclusion.

I am playing a game called Futility," she said. Are you familiar with it?
"How does one win?"
"You don't. You can only postpone losing. I've managed to keep this particular game going for years.

In some ways she was not a very good scientist: impatient with data, too ready to leap to conclusions, apt to judge an idea not by its merits but by its sheer niftiness.