A Better World (Brilliance Saga, #2)
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5%
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“Truth is a slippery concept.” “No, the great thing about the truth is that it’s true.”
Nathaniel A
Rember that suit
16%
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Epigenetics is nature’s way of addressing environmental changes without altering the DNA itself.”
26%
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Left untended, the holes through which freedom escapes widen. When politicians restrict our rights in order to “protect us,” freedom is lost. When the military refuses to disclose basic facts, freedom is lost. Worst of all, when fear becomes a part of our lives, we willingly surrender freedom for a promise of safety, as if freedom weren’t the very basis of safety.
Nathaniel A
Fear of corruption and unreticted power
31%
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Who is that supposed to fool, a ten-year-old with a head injury?”
Nathaniel A
Better than what our president comes up with
40%
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Do you know the difference between a national guardsman and a Nazi? Me either,
Nathaniel A
Every side is shit in this book
45%
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Cooper had a theory about personality. Most people considered personality to be a singular identity. Malleable, sure, but essentially cohesive. But he tended to see people as more of a chorus. Every stage in life added a voice to that chorus. The different iterations of himself—lonely military brat, cocky teenager, faithful soldier, young husband, dedicated father, relentless hunter—they all existed within him.
Nathaniel A
Life goes on and changes
45%
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Just one voice in a chorus of dozens, which was what marked the difference between healthy people and broken ones; in the broken ones, the inappropriate voices held an inappropriate number of spaces.
Nathaniel A
We need to accept the change or be corrupted by one thing
49%
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Amy saw the existence of the glass itself as pretty amazing, whether half-full or half-empty.
Nathaniel A
Good way to look at it
49%
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The world worked because people agreed to believe it worked. He could hand a piece of paper to a clerk and walk out with clothing because they agreed to ascribe value to the paper. He could interact with people thousands of miles away and call it chatting. The d-pad in his pocket could access the sum total of accumulated human knowledge, from setting a bone to building an A-bomb. And none of that was real. It was a shared and beneficial hallucination.
Nathaniel A
We chose this life because we like being in it
58%
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Funny, there had been a time when building things was what America did. From massive dams to towering skyscrapers, from mechanized factories to moon rockets, the nation had created, had viewed that as part of the national identity. Being an engineer or an architect had once been high aspirations. Now everybody wanted to be musicians and basketball players, and America didn’t build squat.
Nathaniel A
America is not the greatest nation in the world. But it could be again
61%
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Where his daughter, Kate, would have ended up. Holy shit. Shan. I should have trusted you. “—terrorists stormed the gates and subdued the personnel, killing an undisclosed number of guards and teachers, including Charles Norridge, the facility director. Whereabouts of the more than three hundred students of the school are unknown at this time.” Cooper’s hand flew to his mouth, a laugh bursting free. He remembered the anger that had pumped through his veins the day he listened to Norridge, the fantasy he’d had about hurling the director through the window. That was the day his eyes had started ...more
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Nathaniel A
Lets all root for the terrorists i love this series
71%
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“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”
Nathaniel A
Fears he has been a dictator
78%
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The truth was, everything in life came down to intentions and results. Cooper’s intentions in killing Peters and releasing the video had been good; the results had been a disaster. Did that make his intentions wrong? If so, that meant morality was really only a way of talking about how we wished things were. Hope, empathy, idealism—maybe they didn’t matter. Maybe the only thing that counted was results.
Nathaniel A
What is right
97%
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You little shit-heel, Leahy. At the very least, you should be standing here too.
Nathaniel A
I bet he sent the missile
97%
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We are never more clever than in the creation of ways to destroy ourselves.
97%
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Nick Cooper stood at the edge of the kitchen by an arch that led to the living room. His back was to Soren, the pistol up and aimed at the front door. Soren was almost sad; the man had proven resourceful, and while he would fail here again, he had fought to the end.
Nathaniel A
They should have been friends but both must kill the other
98%
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The shock on the man’s face was the second-most beautiful thing he’d seen all day.
Nathaniel A
OP is out
99%
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And Dr. Abraham Couzen injected himself with non-coding RNA to radically alter his gene expression. It was done. There was no going back. Abe set the syringe aside and rolled down his sleeve. He’d always known he was a genius. Now it was time to become brilliant.
Nathaniel A
He should have let cat out of the bag and created hope