Agent J: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Agent K: A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. 1500 years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow...
Above all, it was decided that it was in the best interests of humanity as a whole that not everything we had in the closet be dumped on them at once; better to take the time to work out the bugs and introduce things slowly so that no-one freaked out too much. When you have the technology to help people live for hundreds of years, you don't just spring that on a culture that believes you get four-score and ten; they can't deal with it. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a bit of the elitist, too, a sort of "look what we've got that you can't have" about the whole thing. There always was, there always will be. We're geniuses, not altruists... for the most part.
—Mage: The Ascension - Convention Book: Iteration X (Revised)
William of Baskerville: Wondrous machines are now made with which the course of nature can truly be predicted, but woe if they should fall into the hands of men who would use them to extend their earthly power. I am told that in Cathay, a sage has compounded a powder that, on contact with fire, can produce a great rumble and a great flame, destroying everything for many yards around. A wondrous device, if it were used to shift the beds of streams or shatter rock when ground is being broken for cultivation. But if someone were to use it to bring harm to his personal enemies?
Nicholas of Morimondo: Perhaps it would be good, if they were enemies of the people of God.
William of Baskerville: Perhaps. But who today is the enemy of the people of God? Louis the Emperor or John the Pope?
Nicholas of Morimondo: Oh my Lord! I wouldn't like to decide such a painful question!
William of Baskerville: You see? Sometimes it is better for certain secrets to remain veiled by arcane words. The secrets of nature are not transmitted on skins of goat or sheep. Aristotle says in the book of secrets that communicating too many arcana of nature and art breaks a celestial seal and many evils can ensue. Which does not mean that secrets must not be revealed, but that the learned must decide when and how.
Erika: I want to make very sure of this. Do you understand just what we're making here?
Tita: Umm... Well... Well, I only got a quick look at the blueprints, but it looked like a bipedal...
Erika: That's not what I mean. The Orbal Gear is a weapon. No matter how you try to dress that fact up, that's the reality.
Tita: B-But... But you're not making it because you want to hurt people, are you? Even the patrol airships used by the army are made to protect the country, not to hurt people...
Erika: It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what the developer of any new weapon thinks. We're not the ones actually going out and using the things we make. The devices we pour our hearts into making go on to cause unspeakable suffering to people, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Have you ever stopped to think about that? And after having it pointed out to you, can you still say you want power?
Tita: Well...
Erika: We're doing what we're doing fully aware of what the potential consequences may be down the line, but can you?
Walter Gibbs: What you describe could destabilize world religions, topple governments. The ethical ramifications are also drastic; even if the Programs are content with their lot, the issue that humanity has created a Servant Race by accident. I know you have a good heart, Flynn. But I’ve met far too many who would crave power, twisting that world and its people to unspeakable ends.”
Kevin Flynn: Alan and Lora…Roy, too? They…
Walter Gibbs: And what if they let down their guard? Or if this information is forced out of them? I’m not making this request lightly. It will take years before we know what we are dealing with, years where that world and ours will become increasingly tangled together.”
Kevin Flynn: 'The world is not ready?’ That’s what you’re breaking out? World’s never gonna be ready for this one, Doctor Gibbs.”
Walter Gibbs: The world wasn’t ready for the Manhattan Project, either. Back in the War, I was designing computers for breaking codes and calculating missiles, telling bombers where to drop their payloads. I’d like to tell myself that times were desperate, and we didn’t have much of a choice. But I still had a hand in it all, and that hand’s got plenty of blood on it, despite what I tell myself. Could you live with it, Flynn? Live with someone like Edward Dillinger finding that world and your friends inside there? And that’s assuming we aren’t hauled off in straitjackets. I believe you, which is why I’m very afraid for those Programs.
Kevin Flynn: We need to make the world ready. If we don’t, someone else will.”
Walter Gibbs: Lifetime project, that, but might be our only option. How do you propose going about it?”
TRON: Endgame Scenario
(fanfic)
(fanfic)You are not yet ready for immortality.
The most straightforward thing Kosh ever said, Babylon 5, "Deathwalker".
The public can't know about the existence of magi people among them. They’d panic, among other things.
—Leah Vember, Stellar Ranger Dark Star
