Alan Lightman Quotes, Interesting Quotes, Target Quotes

The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.

6 years ago

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As a scientist, I don't believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.

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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

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Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings. Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.

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Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.

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If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

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I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me. I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society - which is true in all his books.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Grateful Quotes

I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.

6 years ago

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I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Thinking Quotes

For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness, like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.

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The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Principles Quotes , Fundamentals Quotes

Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves. Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Moving Quotes , Issues Quotes

The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world. The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway. We often do not see what we do not expect to see.

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People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

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There is a place where time stands still ...illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.

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In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.

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I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.

6 years ago

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I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

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Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

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Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition. A man who has owned nothing but a bicycle all of his life feels suddenly wealthy the moment he buys an automobile...But this happy sensation wears off. After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Men Quotes , Two Quotes