And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
ALAN LIGHTMANI 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.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
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Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.
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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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Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?
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The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
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I go to live in Maine for the summer. Without computer, and without the telephone service we are mercifully without the faxes and e-mails.
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I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing.
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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
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No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.
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Most people have learned to live in the moment.
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I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science.
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We 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.
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I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That’s enough for me.
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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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All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
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Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?
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I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society – which is true in all his books.
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Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?I think one of the reasons why things are getting blurry is because there is not much meaning.
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There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race.
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The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world.
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If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
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In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.” “They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires.”
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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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In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final.
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