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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.

— Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

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Philosophy

More quotes by Ted Chiang

Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious.

Exhalation: Stories (2019)

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)

All Ted Chiang quotes →

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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)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

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