Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
ALAN LIGHTMANAs I understand it, a universe is a … well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling of shared connection with other living things, a desire to help people less fortunate than ourselves.
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I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
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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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That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination,
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Each 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.
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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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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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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. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
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Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
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The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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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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In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
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And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
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