"You may also be wondering, incidentally, why my comrades and I aren’t preparing to defend our convent—or, better yet, to flee. Our rationale is complicated—partly ideological and partly pragmatic. The troops dispatched by the Delegarchs will not only vastly outnumber and outgun us but will also consist entirely of young people. Such has been the practice in warfare for millennia, the carcasses of a civilization’s youth serving as gruesome prophylactics for the aged ruling classes in their perpetual battle against any and all threats to their own desperately held power. Our order believes that to fight against such youthful troops is to validate the logic of empire, and so—not in passivity but in protest—we lay down our weapons ."

"Weapons for what? To fight against whom? Against the revolutionary government, that has the support of the whole people? … Weapons for what? Hiding weapons for what? To blackmail the President of the …"

"It is not in my nature, some of my critics would rather say, not in my power, to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. To try and approach truth on one side after another, n…"

"Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it."

"Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth in a gas station in Anaheim, providing they have a camera there and three people. He'll go to the opening of a market to receive an award. He'd get an …"