Axiomatic Quotes

“I want to end my life like a human being: in Intensive Care, high on morphine, surrounded by cripplingly expensive doctors and brutal, relentless life-support machines. Then the corpse can go into orbit—preferably around the sun. I don't care how much it costs, just so long as I don't end up party of any fucking natural cycle: carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen. Gaia, I divorce thee. Go suck the nutrients out of someone else, you grasping bitch.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“All we can ever know about are the portraits of each other inside our own skulls.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“We learn precisely enough to keep us from wanting to know any more”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“A sei anni i miei genitori mi raccontarono che dentro il mio cranio c’era una gemma piccola e scura, che imparava a essere me.
Microscopici ragni avevano tessuto una ragnatela dorata nel mio cervello, perché l’istruttore contenuto nella gemma potesse udire il sussurro dei miei pensieri. La gemma origliava i miei sensi e interpretava i messaggi chimici trasportati dalla circolazione sanguigna: la gemma vedeva, udiva, odorava, gustava e toccava il mondo esattamente come me, mentre l’istruttore monitorava i suoi pensieri e li confrontava con i miei. Ogni qualvolta questi pensieri erano sbagliati, l’istruttore, più veloce del pensiero, dava una risistemata alla gemma, facendo una piccola modifica qua e là, apportando i cambiamenti necessari per correggere i suoi pensieri.
Perché? Perché quando non avessi più potuto essere me, la gemma avrebbe potuto esserlo al posto mio.
Io pensai: “Se ciò che sento mi fa sentire strano e mi dà le vertigini, cosa deve provare la gemma?”. Esattamente la stessa cosa, riflettei; non sa di essere la gemma e anch’essa si domanda cosa può provare la gemma, rispondendosi poi:
“Esattamente la stessa cosa, non sa di essere la gemma, e anch’essa si domanda cosa può provare la gemma”.
E anch’essa si chiede...
(Ne ero certo, visto che io me lo domandavo.)
... anch’essa si interroga se è l’Io reale o se semplicemente è la gemma che sta imparando a essere me.

Divenuto un dodicenne pieno di superbia e di scherno, mi presi gioco di quelle preoccupazioni infantili. Tutti avevano la gemma, salvo i membri di oscure sette religiose, e sprecare tempo su una banalità simile mi appariva una perdita di tempo. La gemma era la gemma, un fatto universale della vita, una cosa comune come una cacca. Io e i miei amici vi costruivamo battute stupide, come facevamo con le cose del sesso, per provare a noi stessi quanto eravamo saputi in quel campo.
In realtà, però, non eravamo saputi e imperturbabili come pretendevamo di essere. Un giorno, mentre giocavamo nel parco chiacchierando del più e del meno, uno della banda, il suo nome l’ho dimenticato, ma lo ricordo come una persona troppo intelligente per il suo stesso bene, si mise a domandare a ciascuno di noi: — Chi sei tu? La gemma o l’essere umano?
Noi tutti rispondemmo indignati, senza esitare: — L’essere umano!
Quando tutti ebbero risposto, lui rise e affermò: — Bene, io no. Io sono la gemma. Siete degli stronzi perdenti e mangerete merda, perché voi tutti finirete spazzati via nel cesso cosmico, ma io, io vivrò per sempre.
Lo picchiammo fino a fargli colare il sangue dal naso.

Dal racconto Imparare a essere me.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“He’d never been lectured on Darwinism in any brothel back home, but then what could he expect in a country run by godless socialists?”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“[...] She made me this way. She made me special. She made me beautiful.'
'Why?'
That seemed to baffle her, as if I had to be teasing. She was special. She was beautiful. No further explanation was required.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“History can’t harm you; the “chance” of having survived the last x minutes is one hundred per cent, once you’ve done it. As the unknowable future becomes the unchangeable past, risk must collapse into certainty, one way or another.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“gaze down at the dusty top surface of the bank of lights suspended from the ceiling of the operating theater. There’s a neatly hand-lettered sticker on the gray-painted metal – slightly yellowing, the writing a little faded, peeling at one corner. It reads:   IN CASE OF OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE PHONE 137 4597”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“The future has always been determined. What else could affect human actions, other than each individual’s — unique and complex — inheritance and past experience? Who we are decides what we do — and what greater ‘freedom’ could anyone demand? If ‘choice’ wasn’t grounded absolutely in cause and effect, what would decide its outcome? Meaningless random glitches from quantum noise in the brain.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“If I’d said that to my sensible, smutty, twelve-year-old self, he would have laughed until he hemorrhaged”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“A matter of pragmatism; chemically knocking someone senseless is usually quieter, less messy and less risky to the assailant than killing them.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Who exactly am I saving from shame, when I’ll live and die in every possible way?”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Detective Segel, the evidence shows that you experienced a penile erection when the defendant opened fire. Would you describe that as an appropriate response?”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“...the campaign was also among the most heated in recent memory, or short -term anticipation. The soon-to-be Opposition Leader never tired of listing the promises the new Prime Minister would break; she in turn countered with statistics of the mess he’d create as Treasurer, in the mid-eighties. (The causes of that impending recession were still being debated by economists; most claimed it was an “essential precursor” of the prosperity of the nineties , and that The Market, in its infinite, time -spanning wisdom, would choose / had chosen the best of all possible futures. Personally, I suspect it simply proved that even foresight was no cure for incompetence.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Language had evolved to facilitate cooperation in the conquest of the physical world, not to describe subjective reality.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“My aesthetic judgement hadn’t been blunted – if anything, it had become more finely honed – but only the most exceptional work evoked anything more from me than a – highly astute, unfailingly accurate – assessment of marketability.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“The truth about the universe (here) is infinitely stranger, and infinitely more grand: it lies in the Laws of Physics that have come to know Themselves through humanity. Our destiny and purpose are encoded in the fine structure constant, and the value of the density omega. The human race - in whatever form, robot or organic - will keep on advancing for the next ten billion years, until we can give rise to the hyperintelligence which will cause the finely tuned Big Bang required to bring us into existence.
If we don't die out in the next few millenia.
In which case, other intelligent creatures will perform the task. It doesn't matter who carries the torch.
Exactly. None of it matters. Why should I care what a civilisation of post-humans, robots, or aliens, might or might not do ten billion years from now? What does any of this grandiose shit have to do with me?”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Together, we might as well have been alone, so we had no choice but to part.
Nobody wants to spend eternity alone.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Out of all those hundreds of billions, don't you think there'll be people who are just like you?'
'What are you talking about now? Reincarnation?'
'No. Statistics. There can be no 'reincarnation' - there are no souls to be reborn. But eventually - by pure chance - someone will come along who'll embody everything that defines you.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“This is all I need: grief counselling from my own assassin.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“I'm not even sure why I'm so desperate to get rid of her - but I can't help feeling exposed up here. . . as if she might suddenly glance up and see me - see some part of me that my flesh always concealed.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“It shouldn't surprise me, though. The truth - and the measure of her triumph - is that I never really knew her.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“Yes, we're freaks; but if we have a problem, it's that we're still far too human.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“When I finally exhausted myself into something approaching peace, I managed to speak. I whispered, 'Why do you stay with me? Why do you put up with this?'
She turned away from me and said, 'I'm tired. Go to sleep.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“No more questions. I don't keep a diary. I don't know anything at all.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“And I wonder: in how many infinite sets of worlds will I take one more step? And how many countless versions of me will turn around instead, and walk out of this room? Who exactly am I saving from shame, when I'll live and die in every possible way?
Myself.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“solipsist”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“It wasn’t fate, it wasn’t destiny–there was no Will of God, no Force of History to absolve us. It grew out of who we were: the lies we’d told, and would keep on telling.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“You know what they say: the Devil has the best tunes, but the rationalists have the best jargon.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“I shake my head, horrified. "How can you say that? We've stayed free. We've struggled so hard to stay free."

She shrugs. "Maybe. Or maybe we've been captured by what you call freedom.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic