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I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

Bernard Beckett

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

Compilant Host Parasites
And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.
BERNARD BECKETT

Belief Fallen Fragile Problem Superstitious Upon
Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
BERNARD BECKETT

Ideas Mind Together Wonderful
Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
BERNARD BECKETT

Indifference Plague Saying Wracked
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
BERNARD BECKETT

Faces Mind Surprise Trying
Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.
BERNARD BECKETT

Curiosity Optimism Superstitions
I cant see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but theres no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.
BERNARD BECKETT

Ability Belief Beyond Evidence Human World
I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.
BERNARD BECKETT

Book Ideas Interruption People Reader
A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
BERNARD BECKETT

Fear Knowledge Society
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
Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.
BERNARD BECKETT

Consciousness Feels Memories
Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.
BERNARD BECKETT

Century Different Men Our Uncover World
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT

Needs Simple Views
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
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

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

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I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

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