The Wandering Earth

Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains, to strive to stand on ever higher ground to gaze farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival.

it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains. They all want to stand on ever higher ground to gaze ever farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival. Had you, for example, been only concerned with staying alive, you would have fled from this mountain as fast and far as you could. Instead, you chose to come and climb it. The reason evolution bestows all intelligent life with a desire to climb higher is far more profound than more base needs, even though we still do not understand its real purpose. Mountains are universal and we are all standing at the feet of mountains.

What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding; everything else comes second.

The Earth is a cosmic soap bubble. One pop, and it’s gone.

People finally realized that if God truly existed, he was a real bastard.

I would not be able to explain the highly complex process of wealth concentration to you,” the alien said, “but in essence it was no different than the operations of capital markets in your world. In the time of my great-grandfather, sixty percent of the wealth of the First Earth was under the control of ten million; in the world of my grandfather, eighty percent of our world's wealth was in the hands of a mere ten thousand. And, when my father was young, ninety percent of the wealth was held by no more than forty-two individuals. “When I was born, capitalism on the First Earth had reached the peak of peaks, producing an almost unbelievable marvel of wealth: Ninety-nine percent of the wealth of our world was now in the hands of single person! That person was known as the 'Last Entrepreneur'. “Even though there was still a gap between rich and poor among the other two billion, they were vying for nothing more than the remaining one percent of the world's wealth. And so the First Earth became a world with one rich man and two billion poor.

A civilization that cannot see the sun and stars will be without religion. There

The most conspicuous of the group was Zhu Hanyang, a software magnate whose Orient 3000 Operating System was replacing the outdated Microsoft Windows system all across the globe.

The poor could not even sell their labor, and they sank into absolute destitution as a result.

During those five hundred years, the engines would consume half of the mountains on the Asian continent as fuel.

Any civilization that stays on her birth world is committing suicide!

Fangs again paused, deep in thought. ‘What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding; everything else comes second.

But there is something that sets this expedition apart from exploration,’ said Zhuang. ‘There is no possibility of return.’ Shui nodded. ‘Yes, we will not return. Some people are satisfied with a wife, children and a warm bed, never so much as glancing at the parts of the world that do not concern them. But some people will spend their whole lives trying to glimpse something humanity has never seen before. I have been both of these people, and I have the right to choose the life I want to lead,’ he concluded. ‘That includes living out my days on a mirror, drifting through space ten light-years away.

The Great Wall and the Pyramids were utter failures, too. The Mongols invaded China from the north, and the pharoah’s mummy never came back to life. But is that how we think of these colossal projects now? No, we think of them as glorious monuments to the human spirit!

He was a man who lived in a world of dreams and fantasies, the sort of man most people despise. He had never found his place among other people. His life was one of isolation, of going against the current.

People rich in imagination are usually weak, and most strong people – the people who make history – lack imagination.

Darkness fell. The remnant ocean lay flat as a mirror, pristinely reflecting the Milky Way above. It was the most tranquil night in the planet’s history. In this tranquility, the Earth was reborn.

The vulgar is naturally beautiful, and nothing is more vulgar than the universe! Stars burn manically in the pitch-black cold abyss of space. Isn’t that vulgar? Do you understand that the universe is masculine? Feminine civilizations, like yours, are fragile, fine and delicate, a sickly abnormality in a tiny corner of the universe. And that is that!’ Fangs replied.

Evolution trends toward the small. Size does not equal greatness. Microscopic life has a much easier time coexisting with nature in harmony. When the giant dinosaurs died out, their contemporaries, the ants, persisted. Now, should another great disaster approach, a spaceship the size of your lander could evacuate all of humanity. Micro-humanity could rebuild its civilization on a smallish asteroid and live comfortably.

Oh, God, for you thousands of years are just a brief moment!’ God answered, ‘Indeed, they are just a second to me.’ ‘Oh, God, for you vast riches are just small change!’ God answered, ‘Just a nickel.’ ‘Oh, God, please spare me a nickel!’ To which God then answered, ‘Certainly. Just give me a second.

Think of the many small bubbles inside a very big rock. They are there, but they are very hard to find. Even so, we will go and look for them.

Interestingly, every world religion had vanished without a trace overnight. People finally realized that if God truly existed, he was a real bastard.

I’ve never seen the night, nor seen a star; I’ve seen neither spring, nor fall, nor winter. I was born at the end of the Reining Age, just as the Earth’s rotation was coming to a final halt.

If one’s survival is based on the subjugation and consumption of others and if that should be the universe’s iron law of life and civilization, then whoever first rejects it in favor of introspection will certainly perish.

The skies are thick with golden birds. Perhaps one day you will reach out and seize one, but only if you learn to take yourself seriously.

We stood on the bottom rung of an immeasurably tall ladder. In a hundred generations, when our descendants reached the top and glimpsed the promise of new life, our bones would have long turned to dust.

I did not know if I was in my own nightmare, or if the whole universe was just a nightmare in the enormous, twisted mind of that deity!

You are walking across a plain when you suddenly encounter a wall . . . The wall is infinitely tall and extends infinitely deep underground. It stretches infinitely to the left and infinitely to the right. What is it?

Imagine an enormous palace, as big as the Parthenon on the Acropolis. Inside the palace, countless massive columns rise up to the vaulted ceiling, each one blazing with the blue-white light of a fluorescent tube. And you, you are just a microbe on the palace’s floor.