A determined elbow jabbed him in the ribs, and he had to come close enough to waking to resist the nudges. He put both arms around his petite, dark, … - John Brunner

One thing leads to another in this world, Flamen, and we human beings get dragged along like — like dead leaves spinning in the wake of a skimmer. Diablo was saying a while back how you fine down your principles so that a machine can handle them, and pretty soon the person using the machine comes to imagine that this is how it’s always been — there never was a subtler way of thinking. That’s some of where it’s at, but it’s not all by any means. Take the fine expensive home you live in, with its automatic defenses and its mines sown under the lawn like daffodil-bulbs. You shut yourself up behind armor-plate, you shut your mind too. You advertise Guardian traps on your show, don’t you — those steel bands spiked like an Iron Maiden? What’s the mentality of someone who’s prepared to come home from visiting neighbors and find a corpse hung up in the doorway? I say he’s already insane when he commits himself to that course of action, and you don’t have to wait for him to lose his marbles under an overdose of Ladromide before he stops thinking as a responsible mature person ought to! And what’s the reason that’s advanced for acting this way?” He rounded on Reedeth.
“You know! You probably have it dinned into you a dozen times a day at your work! ‘Be an individual!’” Conroy contrived to make the slogan sound obscene. “And what’s this been twisted into? The biggest Big Lie in history! It’s no use making your life so private you refuse to learn from other people’s experience — you just get stuck in a groove of mistakes you need never have made. We have more knowledge available at the turn of a switch than ever before, we can bring any part of the world into our own
homes, and what do we do with it? Half the time we advertise goods people can’t afford, and anyhow they’ve got the color and hold controls adrift because the pretty patterns are fun to look at when you’ve bolted and barred your mind with drugs. Split! Divide! Separate! Shut your eyes and maybe it’ll go away!
“We mi

Mother Superior couldn't be drearier! Life is oppressive and lonely and dun! Little Miss Celia envied Ophelia—Hamlet ignored her and then there was none! Rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta. Penny a look, goobledegook, you can't live the life that you read in a book. Pouncing and bouncing hear what I'm announcing—it's true and you'll never hide from it. You may think you're knowing in coming and going but you can't take the 'come' out of 'comet.' As I was going down the drains I met a man with seven brains. Every brain had seven lives, every life had seven wives, every wife told seven lies, who will win the liars' prize?

I just haven’t been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can’t be a simple one. When I told you you’d been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?