Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.
ALAN LIGHTMANThat’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.
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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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Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
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I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
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We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
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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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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.
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That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
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As I understand it, a universe is a … well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.
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It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
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To the point that I have to be careful that they don’t take over.
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
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At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.
ALAN LIGHTMAN