In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.
ALAN LIGHTMANAuthenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
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Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
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The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice.
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A book, especially a longer book, it’s a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It’s a vision of the whole thing.
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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
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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 value my correspondence with writers…
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Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.
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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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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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I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
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In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.
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For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
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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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I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.
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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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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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It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
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The Book of Telling tells of a woman’s journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
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I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of … shall we say, power.
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I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.
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We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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“Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.
ALAN LIGHTMAN