A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it’s a good starting place for me.
ALAN LIGHTMANAnd if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.
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We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.
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The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
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It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
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Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.
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The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.
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For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness.
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As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not.
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We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.
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I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
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Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old.
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Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
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I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary.
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Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
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If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
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An unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.
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Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
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What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
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Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves.
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There is a place where time stands still.
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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
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I’m humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me.
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