More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion,”
They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
“And rulers are notoriously cynical where religions are concerned. Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
“The wise man molds himself—the fool lives only to die.”
“I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”
The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.
When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.
"No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/ human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.
