{
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  "text": "He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and—and here he felt the dragon's genuine astonishment—of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.",
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    "title": "Guards! Guards!",
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      "slug": "down-there-he-said",
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      "text": "\"Down there,\" he said, \"are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.\" (p. 337)",
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      "text": "'No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they'd knew anything, they'd be sergeants.'",
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      "text": "Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard… But no one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.",
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