Damon Knight

“ Samson and his wife looked at each other and said nothing.
The Kassids had tried converting Midge, to see if she were as moronic as described. Midge had reacted properly, being so befuddled that she could hardly work her way through a sentence; but she had heard a faint echo of the Word.
Harlow said, "I don't know what to say to you, kids. You'll be remembered for this, both of you. A long time. History's been a dull subject for the last few centuries, but this will liven it up. I don't think anybody will hesitate to call it a major victory. Over." ”

“ That's why ethics go up with intelligence, maybe. And that's why the races we've met, that remember the Kassids, aren't Kassids themselves. They're not bright enough. That explains something that's had us wondering for the last six centuries—why there isn't a single race in our part of the galaxy that rates higher than a fairly bright twelve-year-old on our scale. There isn't any correlation between sexual reproduction and intelligence, as my wife and some others would have you believe. ”

“ They were magicians, or demigods, or, as Jackson had put it, big medicine men; they were purer and nobler than anybody else, they knew more about everything, they could change their shapes at will, et cetera. The fact that more than five hundred planets had the same or similar legends proved nothing, because all the races in question, dull as they were, had had limited interstellar travel millenia before the arrival of Man. Most of the legends agreed that the Kassids had gone away, amid weeping and wailing from the lesser tribes, some fifteen thousand years ago. ”

“ Samson grinned weakly. "Is it likely? Harlow—get this. The Kassids aren't invaders in the usual meaning of the term. They haven't got any mind-rays or insidious hypnotic powers, and they aren't interested in taking over anybody's property. That's the first thing. Second, they're not a race and they're not an empire. I saw at least twenty different life-forms aboard their ship, and I learned enough to know that they were all Kassids. That would seem to account for that business in the legends about their being able to change forms. ”

“ We've never had any serious opposition in the six hundred years we've been spreading out, but this is it. These are the kids that can finish us with one hand tied behind their backs."
He paused. "It occurred to me a long time ago, when I was a student, that if anything ever did fold us up, it wouldn't be a gang of monsters breathing pure fluorine and squirting death rays from every tentacle, it would be an idea. You can kill monsters, but you can't kill an idea. ”

“ Midge made an inarticulate sound.
"I told them we're a two-stage organism," Samson said. "One stage builds all the tall buildings, writes all the novels, does all the high-class thinking. The other stage reproduces. I said we have a forty-thousand-year cycle, half to each, but the first stage always tries to retard the metamorphosis, because the second stage is so stupid that it ruins our civilization every time, and we have to start from scratch. ”

“ I'm telling you that I only got the fringe of it, and it made me want to bawl. Once you've heard it—if you've got the intellect to take it completely—you'll never forget it for a minute, and you won't find any loopholes. You won't backslide, and you won't be a Sunday believer. ”

“ You'd sooner cut your throat."
"Over," added Midge quietly.
Samson smiled at her and waited for Harlow's reply.
"I guess I believe you," said Harlow's voice when the time was up, "but it would be hard to swallow if it hadn't been for Jackson. I want to ask you two things. First, is there any question in your mind about what would happen to homo sap if this state of mind spread? Second, what do you think we can do about it? Over."
"One," said Samson promptly, "no. Once you've heard the Word, and understood it, you know there isn't anything more important than spreading it to other people. ”