Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

It was the curse of the Old Empire, that division of man against man that was the continual brake on human progress.

That is the problem with ignorance. You can never truly know the extent of what you are ignorant about.

There is nothing about what we do that is natural. If we prized the natural we would still be hunting Spitters in the wilderness, or falling prey to the jaws of ants, instead of mastering our world. We have made a virtue of the unnatural.