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A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.

Alan Lightman

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Alan Lightman
Age: 75
Born: 1948
Born: November 28
Astrophysicist
Novelist
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Memphis
Tennessee
Alan Paige Lightman
Results
Imagine
Future
Paralyzed
Action
Inaction
Cannot
Contemplate
Persons
Contemplating
Person
Actions
Thus

More quotes by Alan Lightman

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I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
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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.
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I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
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Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
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In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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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, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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Everyone shares the same fate.
Alan Lightman
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
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Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
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Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?
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Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
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You've made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
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In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we're required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection. I believe that we need to slow down.
Alan Lightman