Invisible Sun (Empire Games #3)

by Charles Stross

there are still people who think that if somebody else benefits, it means they’re losing.”

You can have complete situational awareness or complete control, but you can never have both. It’s almost as if surveillance proactively creates new threats.

Nothing is as dangerous for the state as those who would govern kingdoms with maxims found in books.

The Abilene paradox was a syndrome common to committees, where everyone went along with a consensus nobody actually supported because they were afraid of rocking the boat.