“Here’s a tip. The good guys ask you to get in the truck. The bad guys put a black bag over your head and throw you in the truck. I’m asking.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Science lacks something very important that religion provides: a moral code. Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something—a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society’s values.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“When you figure out that you're fighting some other man's war, walk away.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“We attack whatever is different, anything we don’t understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they’re all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“It’s always the same war. Only the names of the dead change. It’s always about one thing: which group of rich men get to divvy up the spoils. They call it ‘The Great War’—clever marketing.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Great leaders are forged from the fire of hard decisions,”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“And when he was, when he finally found love after a life without, he died, happy. And the woman, all she ever wanted was to know that she could change the world, and if she could change the heart of the darkest man, then there was hope for the entire human race.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Ma’am, your husband was killed in an unfortunate Cadbury Creme Egg incident.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren’t.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Life is hard—for everyone—but it’s hell on earth if you’re foolish or weak.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood. Sheltered children become reckless. Starving children become ambitious.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something—a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society’s values.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“She craves genuine things, real people. We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“The human race is the biggest mass murderer of all time. Think about it: we’re hard-coded to survive. Even our ancient ancestors were driven by this impulse, driven enough to recognize the Neanderthals and Hobbits as dangerous enemies. They may have slaughtered dozens of human subspecies. And that legacy shamefully lives on. We attack whatever is different, anything we don’t understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they’re all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences. It’s a war we started a long time ago, a war we’ve been fighting ever since. A war that operates in every human mind below the subconscious level, like a computer program, constantly running in the background, guiding us to some eventuality.” Kate didn’t know what to say, couldn’t see how it could involve her trial and her children. “You expect me to believe those two children are involved in an ancient cosmic struggle for the human race?”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“A war that operates in every human mind below the subconscious level, like a computer program, constantly running in the background, guiding us to some eventuality.” Kate”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Passion, rage—no matter how much we evolve, man can’t escape these instincts: our heritage as beasts. We can only hope to control the beast inside us.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“As a beast, he had lived in a world of bliss, acting on his instincts, thinking only when he had to, never seeing himself for what he was, never worrying about his mortality, never trying to cheat death. But now his thoughts and fears ruled him. He knew evil for the first time.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“The piano keys represent the genome. We each get different keys, and the keys don’t change throughout our life: we die with the same piano keys, or genome, we’re born with. What changes is the sheet music: the epigenetics. That sheet of music determines what tune is played—what genes are expressed—and those genes determine our traits—everything from IQ to hair color.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“enough vodka to kill a Russian army.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“The human race is the biggest mass murderer of all time.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“The attacks did two things really well: ensured there was a war, a big one—and crashed the stock market.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“I don’t think a person has to be religious to be moral.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“Passion, rage—no matter how much we evolve, man can’t escape these instincts: our heritage as beasts.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“The West Virginia Children’s Home. It’s in Elkins. See that they get the balance of the account. And that they know that it came from my father.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“This is what you’ve been reading? World War One–era Gone With the Wind?”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
“every human alive today is directly descended from a man who lived in Africa sixty thousand years ago.”
― A.G. Riddle, quote from The Atlantis Gene
A.G. Riddle
Born place: Shelby, NC, The United States
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“Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use you suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the pwoer that rules it (to which your art owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. (II.4)”
― Marcus Aurelius, quote from The Emperor's Handbook
“A man who has suffered more than others, and differently, should live apart. Alone. Outside of any organized existence. He poisons the air. He makes it unfit for breathing. He takes away from joy its spontaneity and its justification. He kills hope and the will to live. He is the incarnation of time that negates present and future, only recognizing the harsh law of memory. He suffers and his contagious suffering calls forth echoes around him.”
― Elie Wiesel, quote from Day
“The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton’s third law expressed as violence. Holden’s”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes
“my emotions feel loud and big. its hard for me to keep hold of them. they weigh me down. make me heavy and tired and overwhelmed. sometimes I feel like everyone else is carrying a bucket of water but I’m trying to carry an ocean. its very hard. sometimes I would rather not carry my ocean, even if it meant I couldn’t be alive.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
“the thing about a smile is it can make somebody’s day.”
― quote from Adultolescence
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