The Soul of the Marionette Quotes

“Alone among the animals, humans seek meaning in their lives by killing and dying for the sake of nonsensical dreams.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Today’s Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But ‘humanity’ is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“For Leopardi the human animal was a thinking machine. This is the true lesson of materialism, and he embraced it. Humans are part of the flux of matter. Aware that they are trapped in the material world, they cannot escape from this confinement except in death. The good life begins when they accept this fact.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“The advance of reason has the effect of weakening illusions that are necessary to civilization:”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom

“Few societies have been stable enough and resilient enough to renew themselves in recognizable forms over long stretches of time. History is littered with civilizations that have been utterly destroyed. Everywhere, the self-assured confidence of priests, scribes and intellectuals has been mocked by unexpected events, leaving all their prayers, records and treatises wholly forgotten unless they are retrieved from oblivion by future archaeologists and historians.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Modern humanity insists violence is inhuman. Everyone says nothing is dearer to them than life – except perhaps freedom, for which some assert they would willingly die.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“He criticized Christianity, but his objections were not so much intellectual as moral and aesthetic: he attacked the Christian religion because of its impact on the quality of life. Devaluing the natural world for the sake of a spiritual realm, Christianity could not be other than hostile to happiness: ‘man’, Leopardi wrote, ‘was happier before Christianity than after it.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“We think we have some kind of privileged access to our own motives and intentions. In fact we have no clear insight into what moves us to live as we do. The stories we tell ourselves are like the messages that appear on Ouija boards. If we are authors of our lives, it is only in retrospect.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“What seems to be singularly human is not consciousness or free will but inner conflict – the contending impulses that divide us from ourselves. No other animal seeks the satisfaction of its desires and at the same time curses them as evil; spends its life terrified of death while being ready to die in order to preserve an image of itself;”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Matter was itself intelligent, constantly mutating and producing new forms, some of them self-aware. As a child Leopardi had written an essay on ‘the souls of beasts’, and he is clear that consciousness is not confined to humans. The difference between beasts and human beings is not that humans are self-aware while beasts are not. Both are conscious machines. The difference lies in the greater frailty of the human soul, which produces illusions of which beasts have no need.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Everything that exists is a type of matter, he believed, including what we call the soul. We are reluctant to give up the distinction between matter and mind because we cannot imagine matter thinking. But, for Leopardi, the fact that we think shows that matter thinks:”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Touted as unifying forces, new technologies of communication are being used as weapons.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“The scientific revolution was, in many ways, a by-product of mysticism and magic. In fact, once the tangled origins of modern science are unravelled, it is doubtful whether a ‘scientific revolution’ occurred.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom

“Struggling to escape from the world that science has revealed, humanity has taken refuge in the illusion that science enables them to remake the world in their own image.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“One of the strengths of such a universal Panopticon is that the perils against which it protects are not all imaginary. The atrocity exhibitions that are on display in the media are not just fantasies. The most savage wars rage unabated; random violence can happen anywhere at any time. With the rapid evolution of techniques of cyber-attack, every modern amenity is vulnerable to sudden disruption. To assume that the inmates yearn to escape the universal Panopticon would be rash. Their worst fear may be of being forced to leave.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“This may be the era of the Anthropocene – the geological epoch in which human action is transforming the planet. But it is also one in which the human animal is less than ever in charge. Global warming seems to be in large part the result of the human impact on the planet, but this is not to say humans can stop the process. Whatever is done now, human expansion has triggered a shift that will persist for thousands of years.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them.”
― John Nicholas Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion. … Believing that human beings can be fully understood in terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. …

To be free, humans must revolt against the laws that govern earthly things. … The dream of finding freedom by rebelling against cosmic law has reappeared as the belief that humans can somehow make themselves masters of nature.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion. … Believing that human beings can be fully understood in terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“Whether or not materialism is true, there is no basis for the idea that humans are special in being self-aware. There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans. The idea that consciousness is a mystery is a prejudice inherited from monotheism. The early seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes believed that animals other than humans are insensate machines. Obviously, this was a restatement in rationalist terms of the Christian belief that only humans have souls. Even if mind and matter were categorically distinct, that would not mean humans alone have minds. It was reported that in order to test his theories, Descartes used to throw animals out of the window and observe their reactions. Looking at behaviour of this kind, one might reasonably conclude that humans are the senseless machines.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom

“The dialogue concludes: ‘But,’ I said rather distractedly, ‘should we have to eat again of the Tree of Knowledge to fall back into the state of innocence?’ ‘Indeed,’ he replied; ‘that is the final chapter in the history of the world.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom

“No one understands the human heart at all who does not recognize how vast is its capacity for illusions, even when these are contrary to its interests, or how often it loves the very thing that is obviously harmful to it.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“A feature of reality shows is that the inmates have nothing to do. Aside from overcoming cleverly staged challenges and interacting emotionally with one another, they are completely idle. It may not be too far-fetched to see in their condition an intimation of the future for the majority of people. If the advance of smart machines leaves most human beings an economic role only as consumers, this may be how they will be expected to pass their time.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“The Aztecs and the Elizabethans looked into their mirrors to discern danger. Today those who peer into the future want only relief from anxiety. Unable to face the prospect that the cycles of war will continue, they are desperate to find a pattern of improvement in history. It is only natural that believers in reason, lacking any deeper faith and too feeble to tolerate doubt, should turn to the sorcery of numbers. Happily there are some who are ready to assist them. Just as the Elizabethan magus transcribed tables shown to him by angels, the modern scientific scryer deciphers numerical auguries of angels hidden in ourselves.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“How the universe can encompass a possibly infinite number of subjective worlds is not obviously a soluble problem. If we admit that consciousness comes in degrees, we will accept that the life of the spirit can flare up anywhere. Beyond humans, self-awareness may exist not only in other animals but in plants, jellyfish, worms and many other living things. The irony of materialism is that it implies exactly this.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“How we come to have the world-views we do is an interesting question. No doubt reason plays a part, but human needs for meaning and purpose are usually more important. At times personal taste may be what decides the issue.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“there is actually no such thing as ‘the scientific world-view’. Science is a method of inquiry, not a view of the world. Knowledge is growing at accelerating speed; but no advance in science will tell us whether materialism is true or false, or whether humans possess free will.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“The same is true of species. Evolution has no attachment to the attributes modern thinkers imagine are essentially human – self-awareness, rationality and the like. Quite the contrary: by enabling the increase in human power that has taken place over the past few centuries, these very attributes may bring about humanity’s obsolescence.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“No one questioned the Machine’s powers. Religion had been re-established with the Machine as the Supreme Being. Everyone yielded to ‘some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom