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41 " Maybe this was what the media was calling “desperate euphoria”—the we’re-all-doomed-but-anything-can-happen feeling that had begun to peak around the time Wun went public. The end of the world, plus Martians: given that, what was impossible? What was even unlikely? And where did that leave the standard arguments in favor of propriety, patience, virtue, and not rocking the boat? "
― Robert Charles Wilson , Spin (Spin, #1)
42 " Qu’ils le veuillent ou non, les gens auront bientôt à affronter la réalité. Et il leur faudra choisir entre deux compréhensions, l’une scientifique et l’autre spirituelle. Voilà ce qui inquiète Jason. Parce que lorsque cela se résume à des questions de vie ou de mort, la foi l’emporte toujours. Où est-ce que tu préférerais passer l’éternité, toi ? Dans un paradis terrestre ou dans un laboratoire stérile ? »La réponse ne me semblait pas aussi évidente qu’elle en avait l’air pour Simon. Je me suis souvenu de ce qu’avait répondu Mark Twain à une question similaire :« Au paradis pour le climat. En enfer pour la compagnie. » "
43 " Its results would be, if anything, greater and more subtle; but its very efficiency—a mere handful of rockets, no clever timing required—failed as drama. "
44 " No, not sure. But willing. Willing, finally, to lose what might be lost, willing to embrace what might be gained. "
45 " My mom had been a news junkie since the October Event, watching CNN not for pleasure or even information but mainly to reassure herself, the way a Mexican villager might keep an eye on a nearby volcano, hoping not to see smoke. "
46 " A species that runs into sustainability limits before it stabilizes its population is probably doomed. Massive starvation, failed technology, and a planet so depleted from the first bloom of civilization that it lacks the means to rebuild. "
47 " The world is full of surprises. We’re all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we’re seldom formally introduced. "
48 " teleological engineering. "
49 " chiliasm "
50 " recalled Mark Twain’s reply to a similar question: Heaven, for the climate. Hell, for the company. "
51 " Amazing, I thought, how busily we had turned ourselves into people who didn’t know one another very well. "
52 " We live at a certain level of abstraction; we interact as bodies, not cell colonies. "
53 " Grant us the courage to accept the bounty You have placed before us this and every other day. Amen. "
54 " The gadget’s trivial. It’s the network that’s useful. Not the gadget but the network. "
55 " When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you’re at a critical juncture, a different kind of point of no return. "