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There was more known, but always more to be known.

Yes, she thought, and the unknown can masquerade as the unknowable.

The intellectual breeds of humans think in terms of abstractions. But most people have emotions and think they are having ideas.

“Why paired?” Viktor asked. “Have two sexes?”

“Hard to imagine how electromagnetic creatures could,” Mary Kay said.

Viktor grinned. “Lack of imagination is not an argument. Especially lately.”

Nobody out here was going to find an alternative here to Earth’s tiresome clash of selfish individualisms and stifling collectivisms.

“You humans have emotions,” Seeker said slowly, “but more often emotions have you.”

Would an alien outsider judge America’s performance by My Lai and Wounded Knee or by Lincoln and Jefferson?

Great error, seen up close, can look like true greatness.

An animal that liked abstractions? Maybe that wasn’t all that bad a definition of being human.

Anyway, the Shanna woman was abrasive, self-obsessed, smug—and those were her good points. Julia suspected that in a pinch the woman might also be careless, the one sin reality never forgave.

Curious, how any tool properly made acquires a beauty.

In any case, caution outweighed theory, as mice knew about elephants.

To us, most human morality is carefully thought-through self-congratulation.