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In God's body shop, each of us was customized. But science came along to substitute statistical inference for free will. We are now a tribe of likelihoods.

— John Leonard Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

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More quotes by John Leonard

When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense.

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

The life, no matter how traumatic, never explains the work, if the work is any good.

From an international leader in the cause of human rights and democratic values, the U.S. has turned into an unaccountable bully.

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Leonard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.