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And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.

Alan Lightman

Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Century Children Embrace Forget Grow Last Parent Rapidly Second
It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Country Lead Philosophy Republic
After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Buy Car Deprive Door Feel Man Moreover Neighbour Poor
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Difference Important Lose Preserve Same Something
A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Action Contemplate Future Imagine Person Result
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Affect Culture Large Necessary Number People
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Belief Include Larger Ourselves Spirituality Thing
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Correspond Direction Future Horizontal Longitudinal Object Participate Perpendicular Vertical
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Exist God Know Nature Sense
And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Eventually Go Machine Mindless Unplug
You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Back Bring Good Least Magic Next One Some Time
A book, especially a longer book, it’s a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It’s a vision of the whole thing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Different Especially Force Kind Longer Push Vision
So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Amount Little Live Many Nothing So
A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer – in the form of a review or something.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Desert Footprint Man Occasion One Someone Something Then Writer
Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Challenge Film Go Make Quiet
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alpha Another Brain Clock Heart Mysterious Ruthless Tick Wave

And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.

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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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