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 BECKETTAre you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
More Bernard Beckett Quotes
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The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.
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Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.
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A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
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I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
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Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
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The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name.
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Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
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Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
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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.
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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.
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The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
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Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
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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.
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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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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