The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

by Liu Cixin

If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?

Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.