“And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own - the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!”
― The Machine Stops
― The Machine Stops
“The economically uneducated tend to view wealth as a zero sum game by which one can only be wealthy from taking from someone else's and one is poor since someone took theirs'. Thus, it follows that the richer region in the world, Europe is rich since it exploited the poorest, Africa. They fail to understand that immense poverty is the natural state of man. In reality, Europe is rich and Africa is not since geographic and historical factors incentivized Europe to create institutions that created wealth, which never occured in Africa. Africa and Europe are rich and poor for reasons that have little to do with the other.”
―
―
“[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
―
―
“We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.”
― Solaris
― Solaris
“There, at her console, he dialed 594: pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters”
― Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
― Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Nmnm’s 2025 Year in Books
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