In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
ALAN LIGHTMANA person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Continents of memory had been lost.
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I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection.
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One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.
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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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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.
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The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
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Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.
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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
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My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.
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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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The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past.
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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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He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
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