Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture, #2)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The problem with saints, she recalled, was that you had to be dead to be one.

Yes, the universe was built on a certain common logic that could be expressed by numbers, but those numbers themselves were an arbitrary construct that was culturally specific.

Greater Good morphed into self-interest so easily; human history was full of it.

It was a terrible thing to look into the heart of your culture and know that you were intended for monstrosity and only an active devotion to the good of others would keep you from it, even when those others hated you.