Maybe it's something about the Winter that makes me re-read Earthwalk.
p. 38: Social Metastasis
p. 148: "The status quo is an intricate and dynamic process - its point of stasis are loci where opposing forces have immobilized each other."
p. 149: "When a public lie dances on stage, the truth is waiting in the wings."
p. 156: "History is a kind of Marat/Sade of the human race - a diary kept by narcissists, about narcissists, and largely for narcissists."
p. 158: "Most Western societies are like people with no sense of pain - they blunder into horrible injuries because they have lost access to vital information from their peripheries. We are the numbed and atrophied nerve endings of our societies. We have been trained to smile politely when some social institution tramples upon us, and every time we do so we give it a lesson in inhumanity."