“I’m not sure. There’s not much I can do. Unless—” he hesitated. “Unless what?” “Unless I make an underwater survey myself.” Damon was appalled. “Wha… - Jack Vance

“Only children are intolerant of conventions. They are indispensable to an organized civilization, like discipline to an army, or foundations to a building, or landmarks to a traveler. Without conventions civilization is a handful of water. An army without discipline is a mob. A building without foundations is rubble. A traveler without landmarks is lost.”
Lorcas stated that he opposed not all convention, but only those which he found irksome and pointless.

The Rhune is not a likable man. He is so sensitive as to be truculent; he is contemptuous of all other races than the Rhune. He is self-centered, arrogant, unsympathetic in his judgments.

Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself.