"The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects."

"... the Big Bang theory is the accepted theory of cosmology. You never prove anything completely, but it’s the accepted theory of cosmology. And we continue on, in my group, we continue on with balloon observations, and then there’s the and now we’re getting the ready with the , who is sponsoring that. So there’s a whole sequence. What it was, was that was the opening shot and saying OK, there’s some gold to be discovered in the hills, go looking for it."

"So much technology, so little talent."

"“But see, your theory ‘explains’ all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself.”"

"The more you realized what the stars really were, the more you realized what the universe must really be."

"Yes, we did quite well. But then, telling people what they want to believe is an easy job."

"The hard facts are extraordinary, without adding superstitious mumbo-jumbo."

"So what do you do when your dream dies? When your dream dies, you give it up."

"What do you do when your dream dies? Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short."

"What do you do when your dream dies?"

"“We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.” Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child’s rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. “So now they have to run everything.” The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind."

"Viki was awed by all the incredible quackery. Daddy thought such things were amusing—“like religion but not so deadly.”"

"This was the sort of desperate hallucination he must guard against. If you raise your desires high enough, certainty can grow out of the background noise."

"There is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever."

"“Do you think she really believes what she’s saying?” “Sure she believes it. That’s what makes her so funny.”"

"There was an old Qeng Ho saying, “You know you’ve stayed too long when you start using the locals’ calendar.”"

"There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror."

"Pham was overwhelmed by the other things that Gunnar Larson had to say, the advice that might be worthless but that had the stench of wisdom."

"Civilizations rise and fall, but all technical civilizations know the greatest secrets now. They know which social mechanisms normally work, and which ones quickly fail. They know the means to postpone disaster and evade the most foolish catastrophes. They know that even so, each civilization must inevitably fall."

"Yet, even with the greatest care, a technological civilization carried the seeds of its own destruction. Sooner or later, it ossified and politics carried it into a fall."

"Funny how the least attempt at deception always seems to make life more complicated."

"Didn’t Underhill understand? All decent societies agreed on basic issues, things that meant the healthy survival of their people. Things might be changing, but it was self-serving nonsense to throw the rules overboard."

"The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for. From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity—and not the other way around."

"Being alone was something he was very good at. There was so much to learn."

"Politics may come and go, but trade goes on forever."

"So even in hell, there are clowns."

"The old truths still hold: without a sustaining civilization, no isolated collection of ships and humans can rebuild the core of technology."

"Interesting problem, pain. So helpful, so obnoxious."

"So high, so low, so many things to know."

"Technical people don’t make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart."

"They’re very good at reaching nonsense conclusions from insufficient information."

"Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years—and not one of them could come near to this!"

"If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn."

"“I have come to kill you.” The death’s heads shrugged. “You have come to try.”"

"The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched."

"Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such—and those living more peaceably around them—we say look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is."

"Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all—no one’s around to write horror stories."

"All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him."

"Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program."

"He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind—but most everybody else agreed it made you daft."

"Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots."

"We've watched the Homo Sapiens interest group since the first appearance of the Blight. Where is this "Earth" the humans claim to be from? "Half way around the galaxy," they say, and deep in the Slow Zone. Even their proximate origin, Nyjora, is conveniently in the Slowness. We see an alternative theory: Sometime, maybe further back than the last consistent archives, there was a battle between Powers. The blueprint for this "human race" was written, complete with communication interfaces. Long after the original contestants and their stories had vanished, this race happened to get in position where it could Transcend. And that Transcending was tailor-made, too, re-establishing the Power that had set the trap to begin with.We're not sure of the details, but a scenario such as this is inevitable. What we must do is also clear. Straumli Realm is at the heart of the Blight, obviously beyond all attack. But there are other human colonies. We ask the Net to help in identifying all of them. We ourselves are not a large civilization, but we would be happy to coordinate the information gathering, and the military action that is required to prevent the Blight's spread in the Middle Beyond. For nearly seventeen weeks, we've been calling for action. Had you listened in the beginning, a concerted strike might have been sufficient to destroy the Straumli Realm. Isn't the Fall of Relay enough to wake you up? Friends, if we act together we still have a chance.Death to vermin."

"It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing."

"Hexapodia as the key insight... I haven’t had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?"

"If during the last thousand seconds you have received any High-Beyond-protocol packets from "Arbitration Arts," discard them at once. If they have been processed, then the processing site and all locally netted sites must be physically destroyed at once. We realize that this means the destruction of solar systems, but consider the alternative. You are under Transcendent attack."

"Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all."

"I say, let’s learn more and then speculate."

"Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season."

"He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe."

"Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever."