The Mind’s I Quotes

“Consider the fact that you are now experiencing death, in a curious way. Not being in Paris right now, you know what it is like to be dead in Paris. No lights, no sounds -- nothing. The same goes for Timbuctu. In fact, you are dead everywhere -- except for one small spot. Just think how close you are to being dead everywhere!”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

“The repetition of the orphanage drama year after year, echoing the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence -- that everything that has happened will happen again and again -- seems to rob the little world of any real meaning. Why should the repetition of the fire inspector's lament make it sound so hollow?”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

“Science properly done is one of the humanities, as a fine physics teacher once said. The point of science is to help us understand what we are and how we got here, and for this we need the great stories: the tale of how, once upon a time, there was a Big Bang; the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life on Earth; and now the story we are just beginning to learn how to tell...”
― Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

“What is it like to be China? How different from that would it feel to be the United States?”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul