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 BECKETTThought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
More Bernard Beckett Quotes
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Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.
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I 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.
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Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?
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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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A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
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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.
BERNARD BECKETT