““Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous. "Why, the people are the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery." He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was the little he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and the long, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in the evenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late.””
![“Well, that was one thing you had to give [Makann] credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that. Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman. There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First Century Pre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power…” quote by H. Beam Piper](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/eea/h-beam-piper-22331_historical-memory_well-that-was-one-thing-you-had-to-give_2238354.jpg)
