"Now the serpent was more subtle and cunning than any beast which the Lord had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed commanded, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
And the woman replied to the serpent, “We may eat the fruits of any other of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it, nor shall you touch it, lest it may cause you to lose your life.’”
Then the serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die if you take it and eat it. For God himself knows that on the day that you grasp it and eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you yourselves will be like gods, knowing the depths of both good and evil.”
Genesis 3:1-4
"For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer thinks, that is afraid to think.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901
“Thus, it should be understood that when pro-US figures use the term, 'rules-based international order,' they are not referring to anything analogous to the rule of law. Quite the opposite, they are using Orwellian language to describe a system in which essentially no rules can be established and/or observed, given that the dominant state has the prerogative to violate and/or rewrite “rules” at its whim.” Aaron Good, American Exception