A billion and a half human souls, who had been given the techniques of music and the graphic arts, and the theory of technology, now had the others: philosophy and logic and love; sympathy, empathy, forbearance, unity, in the idea of their species rather than in their obedience; membership in harmony with all life everywhere. A people with such feelings and their derived skills cannot be slaves. As the light burst upon them, there was only one concentration possible to each of them—to be free, and the accomplished feeling of being free. As each found it, he was an expert in freedom, and expert succeeded expert, transcended expert, until (in a moment) a billion and a half human souls had no greater skill than the talent of freedom.

Statistics herein refer to the original editions only. Life and family
Sturgeon was a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson and through his Waldo Hamilton Dicker and Dunn ancestors a direct descendant of numerous influential Puritan Presbyterian and Anglican clergymen. Their stepfather William Dickie Sturgeon (sometimes known as Argyll) was a mathematics teacher at a prep school and then Romance Languages Professor at Drexel Institute [later Drexel Institute of Technology] in Philadelphia.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000 its fifth class of two deceased and two living writers. Theodore Sturgeon (born Edward Hamilton Waldo; February 26 1918 – May 8 1985) was an American science fiction and horror writer and critic. His most famous novel is the science fiction More Than Human (1953).