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Goma shook her head. “No. We don’t speak of souls. Not now, not ever. Souls aren’t real.”
“Patterns, then. Abstract structures of experience and reaction, making up a consistent, continuous human identity.”

— Alastair Reynolds Poseidon's Wake (2015)

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Spirituality

More quotes by Alastair Reynolds

There’s nothing like a stupid, accidental death to remind you of the supreme futility of everything.

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

Ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but the souls of people written out of history when history changes.

Deep Navigation (2010)

You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time.

The Prefect (2007)

Truth is truth, no matter who else believes it.

Troika (2010)

I’ll argue to the death against stupid legislation, but some rules exist for a reason.

On the Steel Breeze (2013)

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

Attribution

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