... I am sure of this: America is much harder to destroy than people are ... A lot of fine people were killed only a few minutes ago, but America is still here. I'm afraid I'm too new at this to say it properly, but what I learned in school is that America is a dream, it's -- it's the ideas we all share, it's the things we all believe in, most of all it's things we all do, and how we do them. You can't destroy things like that. Nobody can, no matter how hard they might try, because we are who and what we choose to be. We invented that idea here, and nobody can destroy that either.

• Jack Ryan, in Tom Clancy's, Debt of Honor

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

• Robert Heinlein's Life-Line (quoted via slashdot)