Tuf Voyaging

Make no choice, and you have chosen. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, First Councilor. In abstaining, you vote.

The sad truth of history has always been that the unreasoning masses follow the powerful, and not the wise.

Monsters are entirely mythological, sir, like spirits, werebeasts, and competent bureaucrats.

A culture with cats is richer and more humane than one deprived of their unique companionship.

I wait with sullen resignation,” said Tuf, unmoving.

Her name was Tolly Mune, but in the stories they call her all sorts of things.

Equity is often difficult to judge, and still more difficult to achieve,

It fits,” said Tolly Mune. “Sometimes I feel this ship is haunted.” “This suggests why it is wiser to rely upon intellect rather than feelings, Portmaster.

No sooner had the Flowering taken root, so to speak, than your people rushed back to their private chambers, unleashed their carnal lusts and parental urges, and began reproducing faster than ever. Mean family size is greater now than five years ago, by .0072 persons, and your average citizen becomes a parent sooner by .0102 years.

Weight, sir, is entirely a function of gravity, and is therefore most malleable. Moreover, I am unwilling to concede you the authority to judge my weight over, under, or just right, these being subjective criteria. Aesthetics vary from world to world, as do genotypes and hereditary predisposition. I am quite satisfied with my present mass, sir.

If," said Haviland Tuf. "A most difficult word. So short, and so often fraught with disappointment and frustration.

Such are the vicissitudes of life," Tuf said, "that each of us must sometimes accept that which he does not like.