Important Quotations Explained
Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end: no one can save it now--and no one should try.
"All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by the correct application of power."
"That's a cynical remark," Stormgren had replied. " ...it's a little too much like 'might makes right.'" In our own past, the use of power has been notably unsuccessful in solving anything."
"The operative word is correct. You have never possessed real power, or the knowledge to apply it."
The stars are not for man.
The world's now cold, featureless, and culturally dead; nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came ... there's nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments.
For all their achievements ... for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that had passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain ... yet, Karellen knew, they would hold fast until the end: they would await without despair whatever destiny was theirs. They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service would not lose their souls.
