"Look out there. You see a tideless ocean, sunlight falling on calm water. It's peaceful, yes. But under the surface of the water, there are millions of creatures engaged in a life-and-death struggle to feed themselves. [...] Even the sunlight is a solid fusillade of subatomic particles, blasting apart anything that hasn't evolved the appropriate levels of protection, which of course every living thing around here has because its distant ancestors died in their millions so that a handful of survivors could develop the necessary mutational traits." "All peace is an illusion, huh? Sounds like something a Renouncer monk might say." "Not an illusion, no. But it is relative, and _all_ of it, all peace, has been paid for somewhere, at some time, by its opposite."
Morgan, Richard K.
