A red dragonfly hovers above a backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explai...
High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. ...
I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a...
The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibili...
Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is import...
Our God is vulnerable. He is. This might be striking to some. The prominent view of God is strong, mighty, courageous - not vulnerable. God? Vulnerable? God didn’t only hang naked on a wooden cross, and He didn’t only do that because He loved us ...
There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, but this time it’s really true: I should have staye...
What drew him back was something altogether more personal, to a history where, in the pain and longing of adolescence, he was still standing on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets waiting for someone that he knew would never appear. He had long un...
All the various types of teachings and spiritual paths are related to the different capacities of understanding that different individuals have. There does not exist, from an absolute point of view, any teaching which is more perfect or effective tha...
Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace. The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips t...
I want to see her naked, " Mengele said pointing to Marlene. She cried and shock. My mother flung her body in front of Marlene's and said, "You can't have her. I love her, my daughter." My father said, "Take the younger one. She's smarter, " as he pu...
Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her sa...
We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us. Ab...
There was rarely an obvious branching point in a person's life. People changed slowly, over time. You didn't take on step, then find yourself in a completely new location. You first took a little step off a path to avoid some rocks. For a while, you ...
I'm tired of being scared, and I know you are too. Not that there isn't alot to be scared of in this world today, between the non-stop headlines about wars and nuclear power plants and terrorists and assasinations and civil unrest and economic uncert...
We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider eve...
Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the ru...
The day my father came to claim me, my mother did not wish for me to go. ‘She is a girl,' she said, ‘and I do not think that she is yours. I had a thousand other men.' He tossed his spear at my feet and gave my mother the back of his hand across ...
, who literally wrote , is also part of the Overview Institute. And he thinks of space travel largely as does—an evolutionary step. "If fish could think at our level of intelligence," White said, "back before humanity existed, and some fish were st...
I want to live my life, carrying my memories with me. Even if those memories are painful, even if those memories do nothing but hurt me, even if I wish I could forget those memories… As long as I keep carrying them with me, and don’t run away fro...
We try to make guests feel welcome," said Dee, scuttling behind his desk. He pulled off his pointed hat and, to Vimes's amazement, put on a pair of thick smoked glasses. "You had papers?" he said. Vimes handed them over. "It says here "His Grace"," t...
