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 LIGHTMANThe 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.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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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.
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Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant.
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In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.
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Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself.
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Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?
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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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What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
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And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can’t really depend upon what you’ve done with previous books.
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I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary.
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I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can’t just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it’s really in how the technology is used.
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Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.
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I value my correspondence with writers…
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Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it’s not the destination.
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We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
ALAN LIGHTMAN