Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

“ He had been a Scanner from the moment when, wholly normal, he had stood in the sunlight before a Subchief of Instrumentality, and had sworn:
"I pledge my honor and my life to Mankind. I sacrifice myself willingly for the welfare of Mankind. In accepting the perilous austere Honor, I yield all my rights without exception to the Honorable Chiefs of the Instrumentality and to the Honored Confraternity of Scanners." ”

“ The Führer led the experts, not the experts the Führer. If the Germans surprised the world by the cold calculation of their timing, it was not because they had psychological braintrusters inventing a new warfare, but because they had a grim political freak commanding the total resources of the Reich. Even in wartime, no American President has ever exercised the authority which Hitler used in time of peace; American Cabinet members, military and naval figures, press commentators and all sorts of people are free to kibitz, to offer their own opinions, to bring policy into the light of day. ”

“ How do you think it feels to be in the Up-and-Out with the crew tied-for-space all around you? How do you think it feels to watch them sleep? How do you think I like scanning, scanning, scanning month after month, when I can feel the pain-of-Space beating against every part of my body, trying to get past my Haberman blocks? How do you think I like to wake the men when I have to, and have them hate me for it? Have you ever seen habermans fight—strong men fighting, and neither knowing pain, fighting until one touches Overload? Do you think about that, Luci? ”

“ The only safeguard against bad government was good government by good men; the only remedy for bad government was the effort of good men. The Chinese never set up an imaginary machinery and turned themselves into its cogs. To the simple, common-sense humanity of the Confucians, a government made up of rigid laws—a system having no reference to the personality or value of individuals, but embedded in a vast mechanism of numbers—would have seemed anathema and lunacy.
Government in China was an auxiliary activity, the reserve power of a hierarchy given to the pursuit of different ends. ”

“ Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. "How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?"
"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in the rough, sharp dueling of pinlighting.
Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most sluggish of the Partners coming away happy from contact with the mind of the girl named West. ”

“ Confucius can not be accused, save on the basis of unwarrantable reading-in, of insincerity in his teaching of order. He was conservative, and knew what he was doing, in seeking for the general self-discipline of men, and the rule of precept and virtue; but to believe that he desired one public philosophy and another private one goes beyond the realm of historically justifiable interpretation. An ideology may, of course, be deceptive to its promulgators, but the absence of any genuine class-society—as known in the West—must serve as a testimonial to the sincerity of Confucian teachings. ”

“ This is no mere matter of discharging a cylindered sleeper, no mere question of upgrading the needle of a haberman. When people die down here, it is not like the Up-and-Out. They die reluctantly. Killing within the Earth is not our usual business, O brothers and Scanners, as you know well. You must choose me to choose my agent as I see fit. Otherwise the common knowledge will become the common betrayal whereas if I alone know the responsibility, I alone could betray us, and you will not have far to look in case the Instrumentality comes searching. ”

“ In the context of mid-twentieth century affairs it is almost pitiable and endearing to see us Americans of this time, who are so little given to the drama of fanaticism or the salvation of the world through cruelty, attempting to dramatize our own modest and reasonable operations by giving them melodramatic and pretentious labels. If the Communists torment us long enough they may make us into alert brutes; this seems doubtful now. It seems probable that we will continue to be brave without becoming fiendish in combat, strong without becoming ferocious in peace. ”

“ How can government be studied when politics are antecedent to government? If the rulers make and unmake the form of government almost at will, where is the real source of their power? If armies can dissolve overnight and be reassembled under different banners on the morrow, military power may seem tenuous and dependent on other factors. What are these? If property is insecure and the standards of wealth subject to variation, how can economic power be treated as an ultimate determinant? How do men wield authority of any sort, while they create or destroy the machinery of authority? ”

“ It is shocking and unbelievable to such persons to discover that there is a society whose ideology does not center around the all-meaningful point of the ownership of the means of production. Their only reaction is a negation of the possibility of such thought, or, at least, of its realism. The intellectual position of Sun Yat-sen in the modern world would be more clearly appreciated if the intellectuals of the West were not adjusting their ideological and emotional habits from religion to economics, and meanwhile judging all men and events in economic terms. ”

“ Since the free world is not committed to victory as much as is the Communist world, it can afford more defeats without a corresponding loss of morale. Since the free world has not promised a Utopian future, it can go from the reality of the 1950s to whatever realities the 1960s or the 1970s may bring without a sharp letdown in morale or widespread heartbreak among its most gifted advocates. In Cold War terms the free world is committed to fighting, but not to victory, while the Communists are committed to the actual though remote promise of triumph for their system throughout the world. ”

“ Vomact's eyes flashed and glittered as he asked the ritual question.
Again the chorused answer was accompanied by a roar of voices heard only by Martel: "Habermans we are, and more, and more. We are the Chosen who are habermans by our own free will. We are the Agents of the Instrumentality of Mankind."
"What must the others say to us?"
"They must say to us, 'You are the bravest of the brave, the most skilful of the skilled. All mankind owes most honor to the Scanner, who unites the Earths of Mankind. Scanners are the protectors of the habermans. They are the judges in the Up-and-Out. ”

“ Government was of no use if the people perished. The state was nothing if its substance was lost. Political leadership should aim at constant improvement of economic conditions, spread economic benefits, and make the nation healthy. In doing so it was not to be bound by any creed of capitalism or communism but was to experiment and seek the most efficient measures for the benefit of the whole community. This last principle involved the life of the nation, as nationalism did its birth and democracy its freedom. ”

“ The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconstitution, with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction—a race tragedy to be compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconstitution could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the past; China must fit itself for the modern [pg 064] world, and nevertheless be China. This was the dilemma of the Chinese world-society, suddenly become a nation. Sun Yat-sen's life and thought were devoted to solving it. ”

“ Thus if an American fire-raid burns up a Japanese city, the burning is calculated to dissuade the Japanese from further warfare by denying the Japanese further physical means of war and by simultaneously hurting them enough to cause surrender. If, after the fire-raid, we drop leaflets telling them to surrender, the propaganda can be considered an extension of persuasion—less violent this time, and usually less effective, but nevertheless an integral part of the single process of making the enemy stop fighting.
Neither warfare nor psychology is a new subject. Each is as old as man. ”

“ How can Western technology be used without the attitude of mind which has created it and brought it to operative efficiency? How can a world which never knew Rome or the Normanic Curia Regis know jurisprudence? How can modern government be made Chinese, when government itself has meant something far different in China from what it has meant in the West?
Further, the nature of Chinese leadership has not only been transformed from being literary and ethical in its orientation to being technical and legal; it has also been transformed socially in the replacement of scholars by soldiers. ”

“ But this nationalism was not to be a complete break with the past, for the new China was to continue the traditional function of old China—of being the teacher and protectress of Eastern Asia. It was the duty of China to defend the oppressed among the nations, and to smite down the Great Powers in their oppressiveness. We may suppose that this benevolence of the Chinese race-nation would benefit the neighbors of China only so long as those neighbors, quickened themselves by nationalist resurgences, did not see something sinister in the benevolent manifest destiny of the Chinese. ”

“ Call it propaganda, call it information, call it international communication—under any name the major point remains: Americans can find trustworthy future allies through commitment to common interest or common danger. Friendship is pleasant, but not of the essence. In some cases it might be desirable for leaders or key groups in important foreign areas to realize that the United States could be a worse enemy than the Soviet Union, rather than to realize that the U.S. is a friend. ”

“ If the government was weak and limited, and social control ensured primarily by nongovernmental agencies, how did the Chinese achieve so great a political stability? Why did their polity not break up into a wilderness of tiny social groups, each jealous and particularistic, like medieval Europe? The answer is to be found in the psychological controls which the Chinese established. They devised a system of indoctrination unequaled by that of any other people.
The Chinese sought to guide men through the guidance of their ideas: government by education, or government by propaganda. ”

“ When the forces hostile to Sun Yat-sen and his followers are considered, it is amazing that his ideas and ideals should have survived. An empire established with the aid of Japanese arms, and still under Japanese hegemony, controls Manchuria; parts of north China are ruled by a bastard government, born of a compromise between enemies; a largely unrecognized but powerful Soviet Republic exists in outer Mongolia; the lamaist oligarchy goes on in Tibet; and somewhere, in central and western China, a Soviet group, not quite a government but more than a conspiracy, is fighting for existence. ”

“ A British side which, like the Communist side, would welcome the makers of the future, the builders of the next civilization, the arbiters of history.
The Communists have presented a high bid against the U.S. and Britain as well as the other Western powers. We have not yet overbid them. The high bid is the opportunity to join, to belong, really to be equal, not just legally equal, and, above everything, to share, to struggle, and to work under conditions of heroism for a common goal. ”

“ No less miraculous has been for many the tenacity of Chinese resistance to Japan's invasion ever since the first bullets whizzed through the night near the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Peking early in July, 1937. The undeclared war has spread disaster through an area larger than that immediately affected in Europe's battles from 1914 to 1918; hundreds of thousands have died in action; for months China's capital has been in the hands of the enemy. But China is not on her knees. ”