Veronica: The things I've seen now - other groups succeeding where we fail. It's not too late for us.
Elder McNamara: We've outlasted the end of the world. We'll outlast these upstarts.
Veronica: Waiting in a hole for everyone else to die.
McNamara: If we must.
Veronica: This is a dead end for us.
McNamara: I see no evidence of that. Nor do I see anyone out there with a solution to our problems.
Veronica: How could you? You're too scared to look...
Elder McNamara: We've outlasted the end of the world. We'll outlast these upstarts.
Veronica: Waiting in a hole for everyone else to die.
McNamara: If we must.
Veronica: This is a dead end for us.
McNamara: I see no evidence of that. Nor do I see anyone out there with a solution to our problems.
Veronica: How could you? You're too scared to look...
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change — not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
"Chernobyl was a failure of humans whose loyalty to (or fear of) a broken governing party overruled their sense of decency and rationality. You're the old man with the cane. You just worship a different man's portrait."
— Craig Mazin, responding to conservatives who wrongly praised Chernobyl as an indictment of all left-wing politics.
"It gets harder and harder to talk about 'the importance of preserving our system' when the only thing people have known for the last 20 years is our system making people's lives worse."
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
"The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution 'fail' while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to 'succeed' if that requires them to lose power within the institution."
— Jonathan Schwartz, Iron Law of Institutions
