Consider Phlebas: A space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination from the modern master of SF (Culture)

by Iain M. Banks

They were so intelligent that no human was capable of understanding just how smart they were (and the machines themselves were incapable of describing it to such a limited form of life).

Besides, it left the humans in the Culture free to take care of the things that really mattered in life, such as sports, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible problems, and climbing high mountains without the aid of a safety harness.

You have seen the spaces between the stars, seen how much there is of nothing, how little there is of anything.

Action appealed to him most; it was the warriors’ creed. When in doubt, do.