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… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

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

Community Everyone Intention Level Nation Neighbour People
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 BECKETT

Abstraction Littles Think Thinking Way
I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.
BERNARD BECKETT

Bleeding Feelings Hands
Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.
BERNARD BECKETT

Curiosity Optimism Superstitions
I write with teenagers in mind.
BERNARD BECKETT

Mind Teenager Writing
… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.
BERNARD BECKETT

Fear Population Vantage Point
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

Chance Fear Monsters People Scheme Unable
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

Belief Fear Optimistic Problem Years
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT

Needs Simple Views
A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
BERNARD BECKETT

Fear Knowledge Society
And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.
BERNARD BECKETT

Belief Fallen Fragile Problem Superstitious Upon
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

Change Host Ideas Mutate Together
In the end, living is defined by dying.
BERNARD BECKETT

Death Dying Ends
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
BERNARD BECKETT

Faces Mind Surprise Trying
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

Book Ideas Interruption People Reader
In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.
BERNARD BECKETT

Book Dying Waiting

… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

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… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

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Popular Authors

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