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 BECKETTUnable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
BERNARD BECKETTIn the end, living is defined by dying.
BERNARD BECKETTIn 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 BECKETTThought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
BERNARD BECKETTConsciousness is the feel of accessing memory.
BERNARD BECKETTI write with teenagers in mind.
BERNARD BECKETTThe only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
BERNARD BECKETTThe 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 BECKETTSuperstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETTHuman 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… from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.
BERNARD BECKETTA society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
BERNARD BECKETTMany 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 BECKETTThe 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.
BERNARD BECKETTThis 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 BECKETTWhich came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
BERNARD BECKETT