A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door’s shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
ALAN LIGHTMANEach person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
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Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
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It’s not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don’t count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
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It’s exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that.
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Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.
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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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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
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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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When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are…they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded.
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The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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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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In this acausal world, scientists are helpless.
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Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return.
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared.
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Continents of memory had been lost.
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Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
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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 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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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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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
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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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As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
ALAN LIGHTMAN