One can surrender one’s rational will to beliefs or habits as easily as to individuals, for essentially the same reasons, and with essentially the sa… - Poul Anderson

It would annoy me less that we’re heading into a new puritanical era if the puritanism concerned itself about things that matter.

What I’m trying to make you know, not in your forebrain but in your marrow, is that reality never conforms very well to the textbooks, and sometimes it doesn’t conform at all.

You shall depart freely. Caution enjoins me to have you arrested and garroted within this hour. Either you are a charlatan and deserve it or a mortal danger and require it. However, I deem you a sensible man who will withdraw to his obscurity. And I am grateful to you for a fascinating glimpse of—what is best left alone.