Are you trying to talk peace terms?" "I've given that up," said Makhno. "It doesn't appear to work. You mention peace and everyone tries to shoot you… - Michael Moorcock

The fate of sentient life itself sometimes seems to me to be at stake. Yet do I fear? No, I think not. I place no special value upon sentience. I'd as cheerfully become a tree!"
"Who's to say they are not sentient?" Corum smiled as he set a pan upon the fire and began to lay strips of meat in the slowly boiling water.
"Well, then, a block of marble."
"Again, we do not know…" Corum began, but Jhary cut him short with a snort of impatience.
"I'll not play such childish games!"
"You misunderstand me. You have touched on a subject I have been considering only lately, you see. I, too, am beginning to realize that there is no special value to being, as it were, able to think. Indeed, one can see many disadvantages. The whole condition of mortals is created by their ability to analyze the universe and their inability to understand it.

It is the spirit of Salem—the corrupting influence of Puritanism which in itself is perversion of the Stoic ideal—infecting what remains of a nation which could have set an example to the world.

“We are fated,” he said. “We have little free will, for all we deceive ourselves otherwise. If we perish or live through this venture, it will not count for much in the overall scheme of things.