“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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“Edward looks wistfully at Mat, and while the girls are pretty, Nancy particularly, it is Mat who thinks about the most, because he wished he'd been more like Mat when he was young.
If he'd been more like Mat, more confident, maybe he wouldn’t have missed his chances in life, chances that sometimes only came along once. Sometimes there are single moments, he thinks, where your path divides, your life can go one way, so very different from another. Work out well, rather than be a failure. And if you miss those chances, he thinks, well, is that it?”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Midwinterblood
“To blacks, it was abundantly clear what groups like the NAACP and CORE wanted; the NOI, by contrast and largely by design, had no clear social program that realistically could be implemented (215).”
― Manning Marable, quote from Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
“groups that are too much alike find it harder to keep learning, because each member is bringing less and less new information to the table. Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives.”
― James Surowiecki, quote from The Wisdom of Crowds
“I'll never forget Jonah's face. A light poured out of him and became the spirit of the room, like a genie released from a bottle after centuries of darkness.”
― Natalie Standiford, quote from How to Say Goodbye in Robot
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., quote from Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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