Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.
BERNARD BECKETTI cant see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but theres no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.
More Bernard Beckett Quotes
-
-
Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
BERNARD BECKETT -
I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.
BERNARD BECKETT -
In the end, living is defined by dying.
BERNARD BECKETT -
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
BERNARD BECKETT -
Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
BERNARD BECKETT -
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
BERNARD BECKETT -
A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.
BERNARD BECKETT -
Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.
BERNARD BECKETT -
The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.
BERNARD BECKETT -
This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.
BERNARD BECKETT







