The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred Quotes

“We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good—for putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. It’s called ‘moral vanity’.”
― Greg Egan, The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred

“a lot of bored, aimless people who’d never really found any purpose. But then they realised that they could fill that hole by inventing a grievance, and taking sides, and refusing to be swayed no matter what.”
― Greg Egan, The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred

“The reason there was no name for such distant relatives was because sane people would have no interest in distinguishing them from anyone else. “Once”
― Greg Egan, The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred