“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Cosmos
[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Cosmos
“Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.”
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“Consciousness is the opposite of indifference, of blindness, blankness. Promoting consciousness involves the general dissemination of the concept that each of us in part of a universal action and interaction; that poles are somewhere connected; that there are material causes for trauma, vertigo, degenerative disease. Connections, connections, cause and effect, clarity on their relation and interrelations, the connection with the past, continuity, flow, movement, the awareness that nothing, nothing remains the same for long. And it follows that if a thing is not building, it is certainly decaying – that life is revolution – and that the world will die if we don’t read and act out its imperatives. Not on its own will it die, but rather because the forces of reaction have created imbalances that will kill it: “The seeds of its own destruction.” Our destruction too – the epoch of the Bomb, the nerve gases, the massive precipitation of industrial wastes.
Consciousness is knowledge, recognition, foresight; common experience and perception; sensibility, alertness, mindfulness. It stirs the senses, the blood, it exposes and suggests; it will objectify, enrage direct. There are no positive formulas for a thing so complex. We have guidelines only to help us with its growth. This means after we are done with our books, they must be put aside; and the search for method will depend on observations, correct analyses, creativity, and seizing the time.”
– George L. Jackson
Blood in My Eye (pages 22-23)”
― Blood in My Eye
Consciousness is knowledge, recognition, foresight; common experience and perception; sensibility, alertness, mindfulness. It stirs the senses, the blood, it exposes and suggests; it will objectify, enrage direct. There are no positive formulas for a thing so complex. We have guidelines only to help us with its growth. This means after we are done with our books, they must be put aside; and the search for method will depend on observations, correct analyses, creativity, and seizing the time.”
– George L. Jackson
Blood in My Eye (pages 22-23)”
― Blood in My Eye
Adam’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Adam’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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