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A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

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

Book Ideas Interruption People Reader
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
BERNARD BECKETT

Faces Mind Surprise Trying
Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.
BERNARD BECKETT

Consciousness Feels Memories
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

Century Different Men Our Uncover World
… 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
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
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
I write with teenagers in mind.
BERNARD BECKETT

Mind Teenager Writing
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

Compromise Hero Stupid World
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

Conflict History Tendencies
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
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
In the end, living is defined by dying.
BERNARD BECKETT

Death Dying Ends
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
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

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

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A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

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