“Why not cancel the affair? There’ll be opportunities in the future.” “But I’m not confident of the future! It’s a spinning top which can totter in a… - Jack Vance

“Well then, what of Adam Reith the erudite ethnologist? What theosophical insights can he contribute?”
“None,” said Reith. “Very few, at any rate. It occurs to me that the man and his religion are one and the same thing. The unknown exists. Each man projects on the blankness the shape of his own particular world-view. He endows his creation with his personal volitions and attitudes. The religious man stating his case is in essence explaining himself. When a fanatic is contradicted he feels a threat to his own existence; he reacts violently.”
“Interesting!” declared the fat merchant. “And the atheist?”
“He projects no image upon the blank whatever. The cosmic mysteries he accepts as things in themselves; he feels no need to hang a more or less human mask upon them. Otherwise, the correlation between a man and the shape into which he molds the unknown for greater ease of manipulation is exact.”

A troubled society is like a man with a stomach-ache. When he purges himself, he improves.

You can’t convict or even accuse a man of criminal activity just because he looks peculiar; otherwise, three-quarters of us would be in jail.