I picked such seemingly disparate essays, I thought it was important to say what was the guiding principle in the selection rather than focus on any one essay.
ALAN LIGHTMANContinents of memory had been lost.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.
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One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones.
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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 no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
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The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
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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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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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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 should have written books instead of reading them.
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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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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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I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together.
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And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
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Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
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Don’t you feel something magical when you’re in love?… I do, I certainly do … but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It’s a chemical thing in the brain.
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Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures.
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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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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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I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.
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With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.
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Most people have learned to live in the moment.
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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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What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.
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We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.
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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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