Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [725]

This business sounds half antebellum revival and half science fiction. I don’t trust it. Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 725

Note

The novel’s thesis about freedom arrives as an aphorism with a scriptural loan (‘bread and pottage’ — Esau’s birthright, traded for a meal). The two-clause phrasing ‘dangerous… but precious’ refuses both Cory’s pragmatic bargain and any naive optimism, and ‘antebellum revival’ quietly names what the company-town promise actually is.