“Here lies a toppled god.His fall was not a small one.We did but build his pedestal,A narrow and a tall one.”

“There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!”

“The Proximity of a Desirable Thing Tempts One to Overindulgence. On That Path Lies Danger.”

“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

“We’ve lost something vital, I tell you. When we lost it, we lost the ability to make good decisions. We fall upon decisions these days the way we fall upon an enemy—or wait and wait, which is a form of giving up, and we allow the decisions of others to move us. Have we forgotten that we were the ones who set this current flowing?”

“I cannot lie to you any more than I could lie to myself,” Paul said. “I know this. Every man should have such an auditor.”

“One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefits. Here is the Achilles’ heel of armies, police and bureaucracies.”