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Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.”
“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.
“Perhaps not,” Levine said. “But absence of proof is not proof of absence.
People aren’t studying the natural world any more, they’re mining it. It’s a looter mentality.
Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.”
the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else.
You don’t come to a place with poisonous chickens if you’re not sure your vehicles will hold up.”
And it turns out, again and again, that living things seem to have a self-organizing quality.
Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place.
All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.”
“Human beings are just stuffed full of misinformation. So it’s hard to know who to believe.
Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed.
Leaving behind a crumpled, shattered vehicle. Thorne said, “I guess gas is no longer a problem.” “I guess not,” Sarah said.
“All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.”
“Human beings are so destructive,” Malcolm said. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes
along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”
