The Currents of Space

First, there must be an end to war and national rivalry and only then could one turn to the internal miseries that, after all, had external conflict as their chief cause.

Junz found revulsion growing strong within him. A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!

“You make interstellar politics sound a very dirty game.”

“It is, but disapproving of dirt doesn’t remove it.”

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

An unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end.

Economics is on the side of humanity now.

“Then why did you run? A man who runs needs no other accusation.”

“Is that so? Really?” cried Steen. “Well, I would run out of a burning building even if I had not set the fire myself.”

Truth is a discredited commodity among diplomats.

Trantor could win even such a war, but perhaps not without paying a price that would make victory only a pleasanter name for defeat.