26 quotes
Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
But the church as an institution has always been able to derive strength from the evidence when it’s useful and ignore it when it’s not.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
Every form of behavior is compatible with determinism.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
Anyone who has wasted hours surfing the Internet knows that technology can encourage bad habits.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
The rewards will be purely intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough?
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can’t have justice until you know the truth.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
For him, the keyboard and screen are a miserable substitute for being there, as unsatisfying as a jungle video game would be to a chimpanzee taken from the Congo.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
Just as seeing Heaven's light gave him an awareness of God's presence in all things in the mortal plane, so it has made him aware of God's absence in all things in Hell.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
Technology is being used to manipulate us through our emotional reactions, so it’s only fair that we use it to protect ourselves too.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
He was in no position to judge these people. So what if they felt sorry for themselves? Better to wallow in self-pity over nothing than to have actually screwed up your life.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
That wouldn’t be maturity; it would be letting an expert system make your decisions for you. Maturity means seeing the differences, but realizing they don’t matter. There’s no technological shortcut.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
If [people] wish to love God, they [must] be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
Even if humanity is not the reason for which the universe was made, I still wish to understand the way it operates. We human beings may not be the answer to the question why, but I will keep looking for the answer to how.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.
Exhalation: Stories (2019)
We can’t avoid these images and still live in the modern world. And that means we can’t kick this habit, because beauty is a drug that you can’t abstain from unless you literally keep your eyes closed all the time.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future. [...] Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)