“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 LIGHTMANWe walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.
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And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
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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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Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.
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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
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If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
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The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
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As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
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In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
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Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
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He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
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I believe that we need to slow down.
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When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes.
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Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
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Will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.
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I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can’t just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it’s really in how the technology is used.
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With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.
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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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We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
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We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.
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“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.
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Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
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A world with one month is a world of equality.
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Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational.
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