I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
ALAN LIGHTMANAs both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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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.
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Don’t you feel something magical when you’re in love?… I do, I certainly do … but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It’s a chemical thing in the brain.
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Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
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What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
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The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
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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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Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
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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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And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.
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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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Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
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To the point that I have to be careful that they don’t take over.
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He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
ALAN LIGHTMAN