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Geometry for Ocelots QUOTES

Geometry for Ocelots QUOTES

1 " He said silently and with infinite volume, Mind is only matter that knows it is matter. Matter is only mind that is yet to become mind. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

2 " The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

3 " If I asked you in the midst of a tragedy, “Shall I end your suffering and make all well again?” you would answer, “Please do, I beg it.” If instead I asked you after the tragedy, “Are you glad you lived through it? Did you grow wiser from the experience?” you would answer, “Yes! Thank you for not stopping the thing prematurely.” Humans are not to be trusted. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

4 " Within a few minutes the gin and beer took hold. Leo’s head became full of warm marmalade and the usual neurotic mental noise had dimmed to a mutter. So this is what the drunks are after, he thought. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

5 " True liberation is through the recognition of one’s unopposable oppressors. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

6 " Also: Never buy cheap socks. Dance when you can. You’ll know when you’re in love. If you have to check, you’re not. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

7 " Then what? Damn it, what works?” “Adulthood. Only the wisdom of adulthood. From my spyle friends I’ve heard there is evidence of millions of developing species in the cosmos, many dead, many yet to arise. Some are carbon-based, some are silicon-based, some are gaseous, others distributed across entire solar systems in vast networks of radio intelligence. But there is one thing, one singular pressure imposing upon on them all. Can they learn moderation before extincting themselves? "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

8 " With quiet horror I knew then that the great transition in man’s history was not from illiteracy to literacy, nor from ground-bound to spacefaring, but that invisible, unremarked-of moment when the most dangerous threat to man’s existence ceased being nature, and became man himself. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

9 " History has already happened. We can’t do a damn thing about it. But we can be better. God, we can be better. I believe, as I hope you do, in a time one day—a while from now, but still attainably close—when the curses of poverty, misery, and death will seem as pointlessly tragic and avoidable as scurvy.  There is a long way to go yet, but we can get there. We can fucking get there. And it will be an honour to get there with you, or at least continue the brave walk towards adulthood our ancestors began millennia ago. Good luck out there and much, much love. Here come the wild twenties. See you on the other side. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

10 " Power is fine. Restraint is better. Technology saves some. Compassion saves all. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

11 " Is there a more opulent society imaginable than one that builds spaceships while its population starves? "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

12 " We don’t seem to dream of a better world much anymore. We were burned so many times by utopian thinking last century that even utopia is a dirty word now. But we must, must, must start dreaming again, dreaming wide and big of a society where no one is trodden on and everyone can eat. Our dignity relies on it. Our descendants will rely on it. Don’t listen to these miserable, jaded fucks who insist that the indignities and inequalities of the current world are just necessary evils. These same bastards would’ve tried to keep feudalism around not a half-millennium ago. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

13 " Shyness is just narcissism for introverts. You’d do well to remember that. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

14 " the realms above space require even more extraordinary technologies. Hisarya murmured, What technologies? Wisdom, the entity said in sad cyan. Self-control. Maturity. The survival of what you call bivnik. The true game of empire is not the subjugation of worlds so they might be collected in a little museum of power, but the cultivation of the wisdom to delay gratification. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

15 " I am only wise to the infinite scope of my ignorance "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

16 " The struggle of history is not to determine more efficiently which of our stories are fiction, and which are correct interpretations of reality, but to cease telling stories entirely. - Excerpts from The Metaphysical Sutras of Lord Anaximander "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

17 " The principal aim of the species will be to build a single great mirror which all will look into, and see only universe looking back. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

18 " There is nothing worse than to remain sober around those who are drinking. Their euphoria intensifies, while you only grow quietly embarrassed for them. At some point during the evening they will intuit you are judging their follies and become self-conscious. They will despise you for depriving them of the bliss of drunken excess by virtue of your watching. The reaction is much the same from the gluttonous, rich, and powerful when one reminds them that the resources of the environment are not infinite. They might continue to plunder, but they will hate you for bringing conscience into their debauchery, for turning the light on during the orgy. Why, the house was burning down, but we were so enjoying the glow. . . - Excerpts from The Empirical Sutras of Lady Ursula "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

19 " They ran from world to world, struggling for millennia. In desperation they tried to revert to the old styles of life, became agrarian again, subsistence farming and such, attempting to moderate themselves. But it was too late of course. Once a child has tried chocolate, who could convince him fruit is better? The last of their galactic reserves dwindled, and all that remained was savagery and death. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots

20 " There it was then. I would build a scientific religion, a religious science. I would reinvigorate man’s interest in the stars via spirituality. By chapel and telescope I would show reality in its nakedness, and convince the people of the Myriad of Man that we are but universe experiencing itself. At last we would look into the mirror of Being, and see only Universe looking back. “We would find wonder in the imponderable majesty of the little, in all of the cells and molecules and atoms and quarks inside one’s body, the beauty of it, the absurdity. That is where we would apprehend the transcendent. And in finding that transcendent, we would at last realise we are but matter, and finally seek to stop conquering more matter. The way out was not up, to some holy, blazing firmament, but down, into the skin, into the quiet absurdity of being. "

― Exurb1a , Geometry for Ocelots