As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
ALAN LIGHTMANAlthough technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
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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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I spend a lot of time just listening to the ospreys. I watch them go through their life cycle. They spend the winter in South America.
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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition.
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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.
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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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Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.
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For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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I value my correspondence with writers…
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You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.
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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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Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?
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I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
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Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
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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.
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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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Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
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For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
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My second novel, “Good Benito”, was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.
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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.
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Most people have learned to live in the moment.
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Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
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