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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Liu Cixin
Read between
July 25 - August 7, 2025
The constant, unceasing struggle sessions injected vivid political images into their consciousness like mercury, until their minds, erected upon knowledge and rationality, collapsed under the assault. They began to really believe that they were guilty, to see how they had harmed the great cause of the revolution. They cried, and their repentance was far deeper and more sincere than that of those Monsters and Demons who were not intellectuals.
“Einstein is a reactionary academic authority. He would serve any master who dangled money in front of him. He even went to the American Imperialists and helped them build the atom bomb!
how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?
Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form.
It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.
But after having gone through so many troubles, Ye had learned to be cautious. She did not dare to believe in this kindness, which almost resembled a luxury.
Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?
the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe.
“In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.”
“The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.”
He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body.
Pan Han - who predicted accurately health and ecological effects of GM crops
Why would the path of the sun through the world of Three Body be devoid of regularity and pattern? Whether a planet’s orbit is more circular or more elliptical, its motion around its sun must be periodic. Total irregularity in planetary motion is impossible.…
they want to ruin science’s reputation in society.
By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”
Some comrades cannot see beyond the ends of their noses, possibly because of the greater political environment, possibly because of their arrogance. This is not good. Strategic blind spots are extremely dangerous.
But our world is still flawed. Hate exists, as does prejudice and war. Because of conflicts between the forces of production and the relations of production, wealth distribution is extremely uneven, and large portions of humanity live in poverty and misery.
in general, research shows that in order for extraterrestrials to detect our signals, we must broadcast at a power level equal to the energy output of a midsized star.
The reason why the sun’s motion seems patternless is because our world has three suns. Under the influence of their mutually perturbing gravitational attraction, their movements are unpredictable—the three-body problem. When our planet revolves around one of the suns in a stable orbit, that’s a Stable Era. When one or more of the other suns move within a certain distance, their gravitational pull will snatch the planet away from the sun it’s orbiting, causing it to wander unstably through the gravitational fields of the three suns. That’s a Chaotic Era. After an uncertain amount of time, our
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you apparently haven’t discovered the special optical interaction between the sun’s gaseous outer layer and our planet’s atmosphere. It’s a phenomenon akin to polarization or destructive interference. As a result, when we view the sun from within our atmosphere and it gets a certain distance from us, the gaseous outer layer suddenly becomes completely transparent and invisible, and all we can see is its bright inner core.
Now you understand why the appearance of three flying stars heralds a long period of extreme cold: because all three suns are far away.”
The truly peaceful can find peace in a bustling city. And to attain that state, you need to empty yourself.”
“No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
But this third sphere gave “emptiness” life. The three spheres, given initial movements, went through complex, seemingly never-repeating movements. The descriptive equations rained down in a thunderstorm without end.
I felt like a libertine who has always fluttered carelessly from one woman to another suddenly finding himself in love.
“Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.”
‘If you succeed in solving the three-body problem, you will be the savior of the world. If you stop now, you’ll be a sinner. If someone were to save or destroy the human race, then your possible contribution or sin would be exactly twice as much as his.’”
Even if God were here, it wouldn’t do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.”
“And it’s all because God, or the Lord she talked about, can’t even protect Himself anymore.”
The entire empire has sunk into a quagmire of extravagance from which they cannot extricate themselves.
“The world of Three Body, or Trisolaris, really does exist.”
“The goal of Three Body is very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals,” Pan said.
Wang felt his scientific knowledge and system of thought become a blur in a single moment. In their place was unprecedented confusion.
The distance between most stars is between three and six light-years.”
Your charge is to exploit and create environmental problems to make the population loathe science and modern industry.
“Human society can no longer rely on its own power to solve its problems. It can also no longer rely on its own power to restrain its madness. Therefore, we ask our Lord to come to this world, and with Its power, forcefully watch over us and transform us, so as to create a brand-new, perfect human civilization.”
The human race is an evil species. Human civilization has committed unforgivable crimes against the Earth and must be punished. The ultimate goal of the Adventists is to ask our Lord to carry out this divine punishment: the destruction of all humankind.”
As solar radiation dropped through these different frequencies on its way through the radiation zone, there were boundaries between the subzones for each type of radiation. As energy crossed each boundary, the radiation frequency stepped down a grade sharply.
Her calculations showed that these boundaries would reflect radiation coming from the lower-frequency side, which was why she named the boundaries “energy mirrors.”
Humans could use the sun as a superantenna, and, through it, broadcast radio waves to the universe.
A single Lafayette- or Yankee-class submarine held enough warheads to destroy hundreds of cities and kill hundreds of millions, but most people continued their lives as if nothing was wrong.
In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.
The message that was winging its way to the sun said, Come here! I will help you conquer this world. Our civilization is no longer capable of solving its own problems. We need your force to intervene.
Anyone can take the exam. Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it.”
Could the sun really amplify radio signals? Did she really use it as an antenna to send a message about human civilization into the universe? Did she really receive a message from the stars? Did that blood-hued morning, when she had betrayed the entire human race, really happen?
The small sliver of hope for society that had emerged in her soul had evaporated like a drop of dew in the sun. Her tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had also disappeared without a trace.
“Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant? Who gave humans such high honors? No, humans do not need saving. They’re already living much better than they deserve.”
The first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life. Everything else is secondary.’
“Everything you see before you is the result of poverty. But how are things any better in the wealthy countries? They protect their own environments, but then shift the heavily polluting industries to the poorer nations. You probably know that the American government just refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.… The entire human race is the same.
The focus of Christianity is Man. Even though all the species were placed into Noah’s Ark, other species were never given the same status as humans. But Buddhism is focused on saving all life. That was why I came to the East. But … it’s obvious now that everywhere is the same.”
Civilization continues to follow its path of destruction of all life on Earth except humans.
“You’re looking at the first members of the Earth-Trisolaris Organization. Our ideal is to invite Trisolaran civilization to reform human civilization, to curb human madness and evil, so that the Earth can once again become a harmonious, prosperous, sinless world.
The Adventist group was the purest, most fundamentalist strand of the ETO, comprised mainly of believers in Evans’s Pan-Species Communism. They had completely given up hope in human nature.
