“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”

Source: In the Drift (1985), Chapter 4, “Mutagen Fair” (p. 130)

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Michael Swanwick96

American science fiction author 1950

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“I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.”

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“Both the unlimited state and the unrestrained market have destroyed civil society, which is our world. … Civil society is something that is not the state or the market. Civil society is the world of you and I.”

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1910s, Nobel lecture (1910)
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"The Mouth of Texas." People Weekly, Dec. 9, 1991.

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