Quote

I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of ... shall we say, power.

Alan Lightman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Lightman
Age: 75
Born: 1948
Born: November 28
Astrophysicist
Novelist
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Memphis
Tennessee
Alan Paige Lightman
Power
Irrational
Would
Appeal
Think
Permit
Thinking
Appeals
Rational
Exercise
Shall
Fluent
Greater
Permits

More quotes by Alan Lightman

Image
I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.
Alan Lightman
Image
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.
Alan Lightman
Image
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
Alan Lightman
Image
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.
Alan Lightman
Image
In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
Alan Lightman
Image
Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
Alan Lightman
Image
A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
Alan Lightman
Image
The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
Alan Lightman
Image
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.
Alan Lightman
Image
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.
Alan Lightman
Image
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.
Alan Lightman
Image
Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
Alan Lightman
Image
In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
Alan Lightman
Image
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].
Alan Lightman
Image
Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
Alan Lightman
Image
I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.
Alan Lightman
Image
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
Alan Lightman
Image
In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
Alan Lightman
Image
Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?
Alan Lightman
Image
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
Alan Lightman