"You can't choose your childhood, it's just what happens to you."Rituals should have some unpleasantness, or you don’t appreciate them properly." (p.291, Tariqat).And a lot of people are cowards." (p.235, The Scientist As Hero) "Some people like to tell others what to do.One became a servant of one’s wealth or power, constrained to spend all one’s time protecting it. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one’s options, and reduce one’s freedom.And values were very resistant to scientific analysis. Human reality could only be explained in terms of values.Values are another kind of system, a human construct. Science concerns itself with facts, and with theories that turn facts into examples. "Our disagreement is another facet of what people call the fact-value problem.It was only selfishness taking the long view, acknowledging the real costs of behaviour and making sure to pay them in order not to run up any long-term debts. He concluded that strictly speaking, there was no such thing as altruism.Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold." (p.77, The Ambassador) Human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. "In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses.But what we need, if you ask me, is a combination of the two, which we call the Alchemist." (p.15, Areophany)
Both extremely powerful figures, as you see.
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