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Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.

Iain Banks

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Iain Banks
Age: 59 †
Born: 1954
Born: February 16
Died: 2013
Died: June 9
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Iain M. Banks
Iain Menzies Banks
Held
Likely
Solipsism
Seem
Utmost
Theory
Phenomena
Ought
Seeks
Causes
Suspicion
Seems
Describe
Explanation

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Hersesy is denying the word of God, and the word of God is much more reliably expressed in the natural world as it’s revealed through reason and science than in what I have heard described wonderfully as “the giant book of Jewish fairy stories.
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In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
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I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.
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After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink.
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
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Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.
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Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.
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Escape is a consumer goods like another
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Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
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I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.
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The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.
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I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.
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I'm from out of town, he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.
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I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
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I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
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I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.
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...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.
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Well, he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. Here we are again.
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There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.
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If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
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