Peregrine

“You'd expect her to see reason,' he muttered.
I don't see why. Most of us don't - we see habit. She'll oppose any modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously trained feelings of what is right and polite - and be quite honestly convinced that she's showing steadfast strength of character. . .”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.”
― Victor Hugo

“We must face the fact that society is founded on intolerance. [. . .] We may prate of toleration as we will; but society must always draw a line somewhere between allowable conduct and insanity or crime, in spite of the risk of mistaking sages for lunatics and saviours for blasphemers. We must persecute, even to the death; and all we can do to mitigate the danger of persecution is, first, to be very careful what we persecute, and second, to bear in mind that unless there is a large liberty to shock conventional people, and a well informed sense of the value of originality, individuality, and eccentricity, the result will be apparent stagnation covering a repression of evolutionary forces which will eventually explode with extravagant and probably destructive violence.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan

“You must not make the mistake of thinking that because nothing lasts, nothing matters.”
― Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America