“I am a creature of chemicals.”

“I must rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting that I am not more of her.”

“The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”

“Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals by fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged but in the creature judging, and when we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”

“I am a disbeliever in the unbelievable.”

“Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.”

“Into the the air, into the earth, into the fire, I am with you.”