How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Brother Francis found himself slightly confused by the Warning, but he intended to heed it by not touching the door at all. The miraculous contraptions of the ancients were not to be carelessly tampered with, as many a dead excavator-of-the-past had testified with his dying gasp. (2.8)
It's Francis's job to preserve science and knowledge in the Memorabilia, but he and the other bookleggers are clearly out of their depth. They preserve, but their lack of understanding sometimes proves deadly. And other times it simply proves hilarious. You take the good with the bad.
Quote #2
And that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought." (6.7)
This passage may be written like it's trying to get added to the King James Bible, but it details the very modern nuclear deterrence theory. There are ten perceived flaws in the theory, which are detailed at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. A wicked combination of flaws two, three, four, and five seem responsible for the undoing of Leibowitz's world.
Quote #3
"All right," Francis sighed, "I don't know. But I have a certain faith that the 'electron' existed at one time, although I don't know how it was constructed or what it might have been used for." (7.83)
The key word we picked out in this passage is faith. Francis puts his faith in science and technology the same way he'd put his faith in God because, at this point in history, neither can be proven. But once science enters the world as a physical thing—by way of technology—will it still be worthy of Francis's faith?