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  • Alan Lightman Quotes   148
  • Writers are a loosely knit community - community is an overstated word. Writers don't see each other very much.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes
  • I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Art Quotes , Thinking Quotes
  • Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept. We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Strong Quotes
  • One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones. In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads. When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are...they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded. We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Phones Quotes , Cells Quotes
  • I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Atheist Quotes
  • Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition. A man who has owned nothing but a bicycle all of his life feels suddenly wealthy the moment he buys an automobile...But this happy sensation wears off. After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Men Quotes , Two Quotes
  • In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons, it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn't there. Or ignore what is. We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality. We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Dream Quotes , Real Quotes
  • With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Mother Quotes
  • A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That's a sign of a good novel. Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Years Quotes