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What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?

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
Doesn
Studying
Right
Lead
Thing
Worth
Learning
Study
Wisdom
Knowing
Knowledge

More quotes by Iain Banks

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I think we need politicians we need people who want to serve.
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In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
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Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
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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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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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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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It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said. She laughed. 'Really?' The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.
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As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
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As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
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Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
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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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I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
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Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.
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I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.
Iain Banks
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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.
Iain Banks
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Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.
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I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
Iain Banks
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
Iain Banks
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Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
Iain Banks
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It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those
Iain Banks