“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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“Withholding the truth is different from lying”
― Amish Tripathi, quote from Scion of Ikshvaku
“My names were hand-me-downs too: girl, the creature, or, most often, you there.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story! As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the sacred, but still powerful, prosperous. The theory was spread that these wretched beings were the result of secret systematic race-pollution by riff-raff immigrants, and that they deserved no consideration whatever. They were therefore allowed only the basest forms of employment and the harshest conditions of work. When unemployment had become a serious social problem, practically the whole pariah stock was workless and destitute. It was of course easily believed that unemployment, far from being due to the decline of capitalism, was due to the worthlessness of the pariahs.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Alyce," she breathed. Alyce sounded clean and smart. You could love someone maned Alyce. She looked back at the face in the water. "This is me, Alyce." It was right. So the newly called Alyce shifted the pack on her shoulders, and with her head back and bare feet solid on the ground, she headed back to the midwife's cottage and never noticed when it grew dark, for heat and light were within her.”
― Karen Cushman, quote from The Midwife's Apprentice
“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”
― Beverly Cleary, quote from Ramona the Pest
City of Bohane
The Post-Office Girl
Of Beast and Beauty
Magonia
Made You Up
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