She’d headed the terraforming teams, and it was her leadership which had carried the task through to success. She and her people, watched over by Kau-yung’s flagship, TFNS Gulliver, had battled the planet into submission while most of the colony fleet had waited, motionless, holding station in the depths of interstellar space, light-years from the nearest star.

And for the whole system to be healthy, all parts of it must enjoy equal freedoms. And the most fundamental of all those freedoms is this: that persons must be free to read, write, say, and think what they will. Without that, all other freedoms are not merely meaningless, they are shams.

You’re entitled to not be strong about everything every instant. And you have the right to admit that it hurts, and that things frighten you.

They could hate her guts all they liked as long as they did their duty.

Shut not your minds to the new because the chains of the past bind you tight, for it is those who cling most desperately to the old who will turn you from the new way and lead you once more in to the paths of the unclean.

She didn’t know a lot about politics – yet – but she’d learned enough in her history classes to know politics could always be counted on to make a bad situation worse.

The wise monarch listens to his generals in matters of war, to his ministers in matters of state, and to his people in matters of morality.” “Ha!

If one of her officers needed reprimanding, she would attend to it in private, just as she made it a point to deliver praise in public.

She was never certain how long she wept, and it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t something to be measured by clocks, cut up into minutes and seconds.

All right, Chief Killian.” She allowed herself an airy gesture at the forward visual display. “That away – full military power.