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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

Alan Lightman

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,
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Achievement Age Fact Flood Great Image Megabit Planet So Throughout
The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Document Explode Held Immortality Mentioned Slight
When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clock Crisp First Interval Invent Make Mechanical Time
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Opposition Technology Thing Think Use Wonderful
We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Both Conception External Impose Mind Order Reality
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advice Alive All Aunt Come Die Generation Grandparent Great Infinite Offer Relative
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

Decision Every Fate Infinity Point World
The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Author Great Heritage Idea Paint Science
Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Acid Bit Cerebellum More Sadness Transfix
Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ahead Bonelike Extend Fossilize Future Infinitely Past Rigid Structure Time Well
I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Institute Over People Recognize Think Understanding Valuable
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Been Begin Book End I Idea People Person Portrait Write
All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Draw Family Root Travel Work Writer
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Couple Every Like Lot Re-read Reread Some Try Year
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Connect Dream Haunt Hope Thing Tiny Try Underneath Understand Whole World

But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

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