Clifford D. Simak · 191 pages
Rating: (1.4K votes)
“For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“Has it ever occurred to you that business as you think of it may have outlived its usefulness? Business has made its contribution and the world moves on. Business is just another dodo. . . .”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“We have fallen on hard times of the spirit, with many of the people more concerned with fear of evil than contemplation of the good.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“And that day the cultural god of science had shone a bit less brightly, had died a little in the people's minds.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“The pendulum had swung too far, as always, and now was swinging back, and the horror of intolerance had been loosed upon the land.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“Squatted beside the fire, with the warmth of it upon his face and hands, he felt a smug contentment that seemed strangely out of place--the contentment of a man who had reduced his needs to the strictly basic--and with the contentment came a full-bodied confidence that was just as out of place.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“He sat there thinking of Man's capacity for the wiping out of species--sometimes in hate or fear, at other times for the simple love of gain.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“I trade with you my mind.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing
“At Latham House, we were asked to believe in unlikely miracles. In second chances. We woke up each morning hoping that the odds had somehow swung in our favor.
But that’s the thing about odds. Roll a die twice, and you expect two different results. Except it doesn’t work that way. You could roll the same side over and over again, the laws of the universe intact and unchanging with each turn. It’s only when you consider the past that the odds change. That things become less and less likely.
Here’s something I know because I’m a nerd: up until the middle of the twentieth century, dice were made out of cellulose nitrate. It’s a material that remains stable for decades but, in a flash, can decompose. The chemical compound breaks down, releasing nitric acid. So every time you roll a die, there’s a small chance that it won’t give you a result at all, that instead it will cleave, crumble, and explode.”
― Robyn Schneider, quote from Extraordinary Means
“You know, I get it," Neil said. "Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you're worth a damn off the court—yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time."
"Neil," Kevin said, low and frantic.
Neil ignored him. "I know it's not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you're physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don't think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.”
― Nora Sakavic, quote from The Raven King
“Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
― John Paul II, quote from Catechism of the Catholic Church
“Lord Maccon reflected upon the state of his life wherein he had somehow gained a spouse who could not give a pig's foot for the latest dresses out of Paris but who whined about not owning an aethographic transmitter. Well, at least the two were comparable obsessions so far as expense was concerned.”
― Gail Carriger, quote from Changeless
“We can now expose perhaps the most common misunderstanding of Darwinism: the idea that Darwin showed that evolution by natural selection is a procedure for producing Us. Ever since Darwin proposed his theory, people have often misguidedly tried to interpret it as showing that we are the destination, the goal, the point of all that winnowing and competition, and our arrival on the scene was guaranteed by the mere holding of the tournament. This confusion has been fostered by evolution’s friends and foes alike, and it is parallel to the confusion of the coin-toss tournament winner who basks in the misconsidered glory of the idea that since the tournament had to have a winner, and since he is the winner, the tournament had to produce him as the winner. Evolution can be an algorithm, and evolution can have produced us by an algorithmic process, without its being true that evolution is an algorithm for producing us.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, quote from Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
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