The bomb lives only as it is falling. - Iain Banks

People would swallow anything, just anything at all. Apparently some people found this dismaying. He thought it was a gift, the most wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the weak-minded.

one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting — corruption and favoritism, mostly — endemic to the system.

What they had talked themselves into, they could be silent out of.