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“If there had been some tiny bead present in the brain of all humans, that had told each other, They are like you; that had drawn some thin silk thread of empathy, person to person, in a planet-wide net – what might then have happened? Would there have been the same wars, massacres, persecutions and crusades?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time

“So how bad is the world?
How bad. The world's truth constitutes a /vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it. Once you accept that then the idea that all of this will one day be ground to powder and blown into the void becomes not a prophecy but a promise. So allow me in turn to ask you this question: When we and all our works are gone together with every memory of them and every machine in which such memory could be encoded and stored and the Earth is not even a cinder, for whom then will this be a tragedy? Where would such a being be found? And by whom?

p.377”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

“Life is not perfect, individuals will always be flawed, but empathy – the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people too – conquers all, in the end.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time

“In response to my question, brother shook his head.
"Then he's dead," I said. And repeated myself , something I don't often do: "Then he's dead." What is strange was that when I uttered those words, nothing happened. The state of the universe was no worse than usual. Sleeping the same old sleep, everything continued to wear down as if nothing was amiss.”
― Gaétan Soucy, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches