. . . [Changers] were a threat to identity, a challenge to the individualism even of those they … - Iain Banks

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People love to get scared. People want to see the worst thing that can happen.

Iain Banks

. . . [Changers] were a threat to identity, a challenge to the individualism even of those they were never likely to impersonate. It had nothing to do with souls or physical or spiritual possession; it was, as the Idirans well understood, the behavouristic copying of another which revolted. Individuality, the thing which most humans held more precious than anything else about themselves, was somehow cheapened by the ease with which a Changer could ignore it as a limitation and use it as a disguise.

Challenges, Disguise, Physical, Soul, Souls, Spiritual

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Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot

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One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

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An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.

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Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

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People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots. . . in fact I think they have to be. . . a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.

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