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1 " I knew I was really there, because I was the thing his arms encircled, the thing his love defined. "
― Carolyn Ives Gilman , Halfway Human
2 " I may not know what my heart truly holds, but who does? I think we're all mysteries, even to ourselves. "
3 " I'm perfectly natural the way I am. Why can't you humans ever understand that I might not want to be afflicted with gender? "
4 " Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure. "
5 " I didn’t know it then, but I could never turn back once I had learned this. To see something you must cease to be it. "
6 " commodification of information is the only thing that’s made space travel economically feasible. It’s the only commodity whose value exceeds its transportation cost. We’d be exporting biologicals or photonics if it paid. But our trading partners can build the machines and grow the organics much cheaper than we can send them, if they just have the codes and specs. If information were free, the way the radicals want, then there would be nothing to trade, and there goes the only incentive for interstellar ties. "
7 " Faith in knowledge is the principle you will never back away from, the thing you protect when everything else is gone. Creating it is your highest calling. Destroying it, or polluting it, is the unforgivable sin. Learning is your righteousness, research is your sacrament, discovery is your revelation. You believe not in a transcendent God but in a transcendent truth that we all can strive toward through learning. You are profoundly religious people, in your way. "