Best 30 quotes of Bernard Beckett on MyQuotes

Bernard Beckett

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    Bernard Beckett

    Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

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    Bernard Beckett

    ... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I cant see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but theres no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.

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    Bernard Beckett

    In the end, living is defined by dying.

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    Bernard Beckett

    In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

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    Bernard Beckett

    In this environment it was a simple matter for The Republic to maintain its structure. People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I write with teenagers in mind.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

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    Bernard Beckett

    The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.

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    Bernard Beckett

    The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

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    Bernard Beckett

    This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

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    Bernard Beckett

    But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.

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    Bernard Beckett

    For a society to function successfully, perhaps there needs to be a level of empathy that cannot be corrupted.

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    Bernard Beckett

    I am not a machine. For what can a machine know of the smell of wet grass in the morning, or the sound of a crying baby? I am the feeling of the warm sun against my skin; I am the sensation of a cool wave breaking over me. I am the places I have never seen, yet imagine when my eyes are closed. I am the taste of another's breath, the color of her hair. You mock me for the shortness of my life span, but it is this very fear of dying which breathes life into me. I am the thinker who thinks of thought. I am curiosity, I am reason, I am love, and I am hatred. I am indifference. I am the son of a father, who in turn was a father’s son. I am the reason my mother laughed and the reason my mother cried. I am wonder and I am wondrous. Yes, the world may push your buttons as it passes through your circuitry. But the world does not pass through me. It lingers. I am in it and it is in me. I am the means by which the universe has come to know itself. I am the thing no machine can ever make. I am meaning.

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    Bernard Beckett

    If you kill me, you kill me. Take my life if you must, just don't think you're getting my mind.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that are values are exposed.

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    Bernard Beckett

    Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect. As I have already said, religious fundamentalism was on the rise, but that is not the type of superstition I am referring to. The superstition that held sway at the time was a belief in simple causes. Even the plainest of events is tied down by a thick tangle of permutation and possibility, but the human mind struggles with such complexity. In times of trouble, when the belief in simple gods breaks down, a cult of conspiracy arises. So it was back then. Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst. The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does. This was the true challenge the people of this time faced. The challenge of trusting one another. And they fell short

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    Bernard Beckett

    We know how to make mind, it is true, but we are a long way from being able to understand it.

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    Bernard Beckett

    What about an amnesiac, who awakes having lost his memories and must learn of his past from scratch? Has he died? How can we be just memories? How does that leave us with enough?

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    Bernard Beckett

    Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

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    Bernard Beckett

    You think the thing you call consciousness is some mysterious gift from the heavens, but in the end consciousness is nothing but the context in which your thinking occurs. Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.