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  • Alan Lightman Quotes   148
  • Most people have learned to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. ... It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Learning Quotes , Past Quotes
  • Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Years Quotes
  • When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes. Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms. There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Heart Quotes , People Quotes
  • Writers are a loosely knit community - community is an overstated word. Writers don't see each other very much.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes
  • I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can't just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it's really in how the technology is used. What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we're going.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Technology Quotes , Thinking 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Years Quotes
  • I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Law Quotes , Play 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Art Quotes , Thinking Quotes
  • A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back. In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time. Each person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Goodbye Quotes , Coffee Quotes