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They were eager to get away from the sound of explosions and the excitement of celebration, and repair to the calm of scholarly discourse.
“Me conformé con no saber nada o con saber sólo cosas falsas; porque, infantilmente, me hice el tonto, acepté mudo su desaparición y, de esa forma, evité una vez más las palabras «por qué» de modo que, al pelar la cebolla, mi silencio me atruena los oídos”
― Peeling the Onion
― Peeling the Onion
“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments.
They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul.
If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away.
If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”
―
They burn them all away, but they're not punishing you, they're freeing your soul.
If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away.
If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”
―
“The Minds did not assume such distinctions; to them, there was no cutoff between the two. Tactics cohered into strategy, strategy disintegrated into tactics, in the sliding scale of their dialectical moral algebra. It was all more than they ever expected the mammal brain to cope with. He recalled what Sma had said to him, long long ago back in that new beginning (itself the product of so much guilt and pain); that they dealt in the intrinsically untoward, where rules were forged as you went along and were never the same twice anyway, where just by the nature of things nothing could be known or predicted or even judged with any real certainty. It all sounded very sophisticated and abstract and challenging to work with, but in the end it came down to people and problems.”
― Use of Weapons
― Use of Weapons
“So much of human suffering stems from having this self that needs to be psychologically defended at all costs. We’re trapped in a story that sees ourselves as independent, isolated agents acting in the world. But that self is an illusion. It can be a useful illusion, when you’re swinging through the trees or escaping from a cheetah or trying to do your taxes. But at the systems level, there is no truth to it. You can take any number of more accurate perspectives: that we’re a swarm of genes, vehicles for passing on DNA; that we’re social creatures through and through, unable to survive alone; that we’re organisms in an ecosystem, linked together on this planet floating in the middle of nowhere. Wherever you look, you see that the level of interconnectedness is truly amazing, and yet we insist on thinking of ourselves as individual agents.” Albert Einstein called the modern human’s sense of separateness “a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”*”
― How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
― How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
“Tired but happy. There is nothing more beautiful than some straightforward, concrete, generally useful trade...Intellectual labor tears a man out of human society. A craft, on the other hand, leads him towards men. What a pity I can no longer work in the workshop or in the garden.”
― Conversations with Kafka
― Conversations with Kafka
The History Book Club
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Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels
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This group is for like-minded people who want to read all of the Hugo and Nebula winners and runners-up. The Hugo Awards are chosen by the fans. The ...more
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Hi there! SFFBC is a welcoming place for readers to share their love of speculative fiction through group reads, buddy reads, challenges, ...more
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