She tried, sometimes, to remember how it had been to be young. Or even, not quite so old. - Stephen Baxter

Despite his friendship with Adam Smith, he believed in government intervention in agriculture, as it was too important to be left to market forces and chance: ‘The husbandman maintains the nation in all its ease, its affluence and its splendour,’ he wrote. But farmers too had a responsibility for the public good. Rotation of crops, ensuring equal acreages of different crops at any given time, would help keep prices stable.

Superstition! A fatal flaw for a regime whose legitimacy comes entirely from religion.

“No. You are wrong. These structures are alive.”
“What?”
“By any reasonable definition of the word. They can reproduce themselves. They can manipulate the external world, creating local conditions of increased order. They have internal states which can change independently of external inputs; they have memories which can be accessed at will…All these are characteristics of Life, and Mind.