“Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.”

“We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.”

“You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don't know everything. And since we don't know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.”

“They tried to believe in their classmates. They must have believed that if we could all get together, then we might end up being saved. We should commend them for that. We couldn't do that.”

“We do not believe in heaven or hell...; we do not believe in eternal damnation. We believe only in the unavoidable horror of hurting others and of likewise being hurt.”

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”