Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
ALAN LIGHTMANNot only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class – contemporary literature is what’s most useful.
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I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film.
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I believe that we need to slow down.
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We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
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The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
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The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
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In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
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It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
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While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
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And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
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I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
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And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don’t think that we will become the machines of the machines.
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You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.
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We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.
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I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That’s good time. I have a couple hobbies. I’m a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer.
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I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.
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I spend a lot of time just listening to the ospreys. I watch them go through their life cycle. They spend the winter in South America.
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Like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.
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Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.
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Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
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The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world.
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I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.
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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.
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