Men grew desperate and the border between bitter frustration and wild destruction is sometimes easily crossed. — Isaac Asimov

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.

Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

“Logically, developing children are carefully screened for physical and mental defects before being allowed to mature.”

Baley interrupted. “You mean you kill them if they don’t—”

“If they don’t measure up. Quite painlessly, I assure you. The notion shocks you, just as the Earthman’s uncontrolled breeding shocks us.”

I tell you I know the type of people that become Medievalists. They’re soft, dreamy people who find life too hard for them here and get lost in an ideal world of the past that never really existed.