black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

Bernard Beckett

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.
BERNARD BECKETT

Compromise Hero Stupid World
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
BERNARD BECKETT

Faces Mind Surprise Trying
Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
BERNARD BECKETT

Indifference Plague Saying Wracked
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
BERNARD BECKETT

Change Host Ideas Mutate Together
I write with teenagers in mind.
BERNARD BECKETT

Mind Teenager Writing
Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.
BERNARD BECKETT

Consciousness Feels Memories
Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence.
BERNARD BECKETT

Belief Fear Optimistic Problem Years
The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.
BERNARD BECKETT

Ideas Machine Mind
In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.
BERNARD BECKETT

Book Dying Waiting
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT

Needs Simple Views
Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
BERNARD BECKETT

Compilant Host Parasites
… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.
BERNARD BECKETT

Fear Population Vantage Point
Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.
BERNARD BECKETT

Abstraction Littles Think Thinking Way
I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.
BERNARD BECKETT

Bleeding Feelings Hands
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
BERNARD BECKETT

Conflict History Tendencies
The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.
BERNARD BECKETT

Community Everyone Intention Level Nation Neighbour People

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Beckett Quotes