Benjamin Espen

“The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Surprise is an event that occurs in the mind of an enemy commander.”
― Jerry Pournelle, Prince of Mercenaries

“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
― Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith

“Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”
― G.K. Chesterton