46
" Many of the great economic masters, though they had originally favored radio-bliss in moderation as an opiate for the discontented workers, now turned against it. Their craving was for power; and for power they needed slaves whose labor they could command for their great industrial ventures. They therefore developed an instrument which was at once an opiate and a spur. By every method of propaganda they sought to rouse the passions of nationalism and racial hatred. They created, in fact, the "Other Fascism", complete with lies, with mystical cult of race and state, with scorn of reason, with praise of brutal mastery, with appeal at once to the vilest and to the generous motives of the deluded young. "
― Olaf Stapledon , Star Maker
47
" It was very strange that I, who knew the whole extent of space and time, and counted the wandering stars like sheep, overlooking none, but I who was the most awakened of all beings, I, the glory which myriads in all ages had given their lives to establish, and myriads had worshipped, should now look about me with the same overpowering awe, the same abashed and tongue-tied worship as that which human travelers in the desert feel under the stars. "
― Olaf Stapledon , Star Maker
50
" I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of stars. If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man’s blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a universal movement! "
― Olaf Stapledon , Star Maker
51
" ¡Qué predestinada me había parecido nuestra unión! Y ahora, en el recuerdo ¡qué accidental! Por supuesto, como muchos viejos matrimonios, nos entendíamos muy bien, como dos árboles que han crecido unidos, distorsionándose, pero soportándose. Fríamente, la vi a ella como un simple aditamento a mi vida personal, a veces útil, pero muy a menudo irritante. Éramos en realidad buenos compañeros. Nos concedíamos una cierta libertad, y así nos tolerábamos.
Ésa era nuestra relación. Desde ese punto de vista no parecía muy importante para la comprensión del universo. Pero en mi corazón yo sabía que no era así. Ni aun las frías estrellas, ni aun la totalidad del cosmos con todas sus vacías inmensidades podían convencerme de que ese nuestro preciado átomo de comunidad, que era tan imperfecto, que moriría tan pronto, no tuviese ningún significado "
― Olaf Stapledon , Star Maker