Amaranth > Amaranth's Quotes

“Perfection’s unattainable but it isn’t unapproachable.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Scheme against your most sacred principles in thought, word and deed…. The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves.”
― Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null and Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Not even Lucifer left Heaven until he was pushed.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“It’s not in the nature of the lamb to mourn the lion.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Maybe your empathy's just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you're only feeling yourself, maybe you're even worse than me. Or maybe we're all just guessing.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“PREDATORS RUN FOR THEIR DINNER. PREY RUN FOR THEIR LIVES.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Let no one else use you, Mr. Ai,” the king was saying. “Keep clear of factions. Tell your own lies, do your own deeds. And trust no one.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight