Parable of the Talents: winner of the Nebula Award (Parable 2)

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.

“Yes,” Bankole said. “In spite of his scars, he’s a good-looking boy. I wonder whether his looks have saved him or destroyed him. Or both.”

“No, of course not. But someone does. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, Len, but the world is full of needy people. They don’t all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said. “Those people were willing to follow an 18-year-old girl because she seemed to be going somewhere, seemed to know where she was going. People elected Jarret because he seemed to know where he was going too. Even rich people like your dad are desperate for someone who seems to know where they’re going.”

When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.”

Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm. Partnership is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership is life. Any entity,

So much agony caused, so much evil done in God’s name.

“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. Civilization provides ways of combining the information, experience, and creativity of the many to achieve ongoing group adaptability.”

It’s always been much easier to make war than to make peace.