“Almost anything one says or has said about what society wants or should get is threatened with internal inconsistency.”

“You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?”

“Even as the United States has risen to become the predominant international power, however, conflict has persisted over the nature of American society itself and what its role in the world should be.”

“A manwhat he has passion about,” Breeze said. “I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what youyou should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.”

“I don't think about anything," he says, "No thoughts at all! I think about not getting killed… that keeps me busy… One more day is one more day-That's what I think!”

“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

“It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.”

“One of the strangest things I have encountered on your world, dear Benita, is that many of your people have no idea who they really are but many ridiculous ideas about what they are expected to be, plus many religious convictions about what they should be, although nobody is! One should not want to be anything but what one is because it creates unhappiness.”

“If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.”

“Great complaints were made by both sides as to whose fault it was that there was a failure, but I told the navy I didn't want to hear anything about it; they did not get through, and didn't get the fort, and the less said about it the better.”