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• As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.
  The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism....
• The entire character of a base and its inhabitants can be absorbed in a quick trip to the Rec Commons.
  The sweaty arenas of Fort Legion, the glittering gambling halls of Morgan Bank, the sunny lovers' trysts in Gaia's High Garden, or the somber reading rooms of U....
• I hold a scrap of paper in the darkness and light it.
  I watch it burn bright and curl, disappearing into nothingness, and the heat burns my fingers....
• Scientific theories are judged by the coherence they lend to our natural experience and the simplicity with which they do so.
  The grand principle of the heavens balances on the razor's edge of truth....
• I loved my chosen. How then to face the day when she left me?
  So I took from her body a single cell, perhaps to love her again....
• Until quite recently, spider silk had the highest tensile strength of any substance known to man, and the name Silksteel pays homage to the arachnid for good reason.
  -- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Scientific Survey...
• A man cannot speak but he judges himself...no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
  -- Emerso...
• He who believes the past cannot be changed has not yet written his memoirs.
• Our ancestors harnessed the power of a sun, and so again shall we.
  -- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "The Science of Our Fathe...