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Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3) QUOTES

Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3) QUOTES

1 " I said, ‘The truth is whatever you can get away with.’ ‘No, that’s journalism. The truth is whatever you can’t escape. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

2 " Because sex, drugs, and religion all hinge on the same kind of simple neurochemical events: addictive, euphoric, exhilirating - and all, equally, meaningless. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

3 " I used to think that if you changed from … valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you’d learnt something new, understood something better. And it’s not like that at all. I just value what I’m stuck with. That’s it, that’s the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can’t escape. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

4 " Have you heard the story of the widow’s mite?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘For years, as a schoolboy, I turned it over and over in my head. The poor widow’s small gift was more precious than the rich man’s large one. Okay. Fine. I understood the message. I could see the dignity it gave to every act of charity. But I could see a whole lot more encoded in that parable, and those other things wouldn’t go away. ‘I could see a religion which cared more about feeling good than doing good. A religion which valued the pleasure of giving – or the pain – more than any tangible effect. A religion which put … saving your own soul through good works far above their worldly consequences. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

5 " If there was one remaining purpose to my life, though, this was it: to prove that the truth could always be faced – explained, demystified, accepted. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

6 " I was matter, like everything else. I could feel the slow decay of my body, the absolute certainty of death. Every heartbeat spelt out a new proof of mortality. Every moment was a premature burial. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

7 " Pick a number between ten and a thousand. Don’t tell me what it is. [Thinks … 575] Add the digits together. [17] Add them again. [8] Add 3. [11] Subtract this from the original number. [564] Add the digits together. [15] Find the remainder left when you divide by nine. [6] Square it. [36] Add 6. [42] The number in your head now is … 42? [Yes!] Now try it once again… "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

8 " The Aleph moment would be followed, on a timescale of seconds, by the degeneration of physics into pure mathematics. Just as the Big Bang implied pre-space before it – an infinitely symmetric roiling abstraction where nothing really existed or happened – the Aleph moment would bring on the informational mirror image, another infinite wasteland without time or space. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

9 " Science has been abused for every conceivable purpose under the sun. Which is all the more reason to deliver the power it grants to as many people as possible, as rapidly as possible, instead of leaving it in the hands of a few. It is not a reason to retreat into fantasy – to declare: knowledge is a cultural artifact, nothing is universally true, only mysticism and obfuscation and ignorance will save us. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

10 " Inhabiting this universe is not a cultural prerogative, or a lifestyle decision. And I don’t have to forgive or forget a single act of enslavement, theft, imperialism, or patriarchy, in order to be a physicist – or to approach the subject with whatever intellectual tools I need. Every scientist sees further by standing on a pile of corpses – and frankly, I don’t care what kind of genitals they had, what language they spoke, or what the colour of their skin was. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)

11 " Every democracy was a kind of anarchy in slow motion: any statute, any constitution could be changed, given time; any social contract, written or unwritten, could be dishonoured. "

― Greg Egan , Distress (Subjective Cosmology #3)