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A society in which each is expected to succeed, and is placed under conditions where most must fail, would be incomprehensible, irrational, to most Goreans. - (Raiders of Gor, Chapter 10, Sentence #176)

For all their threats of desertion of the arsenal there are few of them who would want to leave it. Building fine and beautiful ships gives them great pleasure. Beyond this, lastly, it might be mentioned that Gorean society, on the whole, tends to be tradition bound, and that there is little questioning of the wisdom of one's fathers; in such a society individuals usually have an identity satisfactory to themselves, and a place in which they feel comfortable; accordingly they are less susceptible to the social confusions attendant upon a society in which greater mobility is encouraged and traditional prestige considerations replaced with materialistic ones. A society in which each is expected to succeed, and is placed under conditions where most must fail, would be incomprehensible, irrational, to most Goreans. This will sound strange, I suppose, but the workers of the arsenal, as long as they make enough to live reasonably well, are more concerned with their work, as craftsmen, than they are with considerably and indefinitely improving their economic status. This is not to say that they would have any objection to being rich; it is only to remark, in effect, that it has never occurred to them, no more than to most Goreans, to take very seriously the pursuit of wealth as their universal and compelling motivation; being ignorant, it seems, they, like most other Goreans, are more concerned with other things, such as, as I have earlier noted, the building of fine and beautiful ships. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. - (Raiders of Gor)