Quote

I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.

R. Scott Bakker

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R. Scott Bakker
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
Eärwa
Richard Scott Bakker
Asking
Made
Long
Ignorance
Things
Asked
Men
Darkness
Despise
Told
Prize
Wise
Invisible
Dark
Remains
Fear

More quotes by R. Scott Bakker

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Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.
R. Scott Bakker
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Beliefs are the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.
R. Scott Bakker
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Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.
R. Scott Bakker
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
R. Scott Bakker
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If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.
R. Scott Bakker
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Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.
R. Scott Bakker
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
R. Scott Bakker
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If the world is a game whose rules are written by the God, and sorcerers are those who cheat and cheat, then who has written the rules of sorcery?
R. Scott Bakker
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The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?
R. Scott Bakker
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There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.
R. Scott Bakker
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To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?
R. Scott Bakker
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I wanted a literate, socially intricate, and cosmopolitan world - something I could have fun destroying.
R. Scott Bakker
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What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?
R. Scott Bakker
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Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.
R. Scott Bakker
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Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.
R. Scott Bakker
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Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.
R. Scott Bakker
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The world is a big place and our brain is only three pounds.
R. Scott Bakker
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Achamian tossed his hands skyward in dismay. “Foolish boy! How many faiths are there? How many competing beliefs? And you would murder another on the slender hope that yours is somehow the only one?
R. Scott Bakker
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Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.
R. Scott Bakker
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The world is only as deep as we can see. This is why fools think themselves profound. This is why terror is the passion of revelation.
R. Scott Bakker