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 BECKETTThought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
More Bernard Beckett Quotes
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In the end, living is defined by dying.
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Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
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Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
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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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Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.
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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. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence.
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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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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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I write with teenagers in mind.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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