Bernard Beckett Quotes & Sayings

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction. — Bernard Beckett

I'm a school teacher, and later on, well past my formal education, I became very interested in science. — Bernard Beckett

In the end, living is defined by dying. — 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. — 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. — 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. — Bernard Beckett

From our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself. — 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. — 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? — Bernard Beckett

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself. — 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. — Bernard Beckett

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed. — Bernard Beckett

Do you believe in God?' Grace asked him. The question was not strange. They were past strangeness.
'Of course' he replied. It was easier than the truth, simpler.
'Why?'
'Because without God' he started, his voice slipping easily into the lilting rhythm of recitation, 'we have no reason to believe in reason. Without God, our reason is an accident of the cosmos, as ultimately inconsequential as the spinning of the planet or the pulling of the tides. Reason becomes unimportant, and hence untenable. Without God we have only belief, and yet we are left with nothing to believe in'. — Bernard Beckett

I didn't study science beyond high school level, but I'd been reading a lot of science books by people like Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett. I also spent a year working on a fellowship in a research centre - the Allan Wilson Centre - where I got a hands-on look at their work sequencing DNA. — Bernard Beckett

I like the concept of teenagers and philosophy. — 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. — Bernard Beckett

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

I can't see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but there's no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief. — Bernard Beckett

The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes. — Bernard Beckett

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it. — Bernard Beckett

Ugly's still ugly, no matter how you see it."
"An interesting assertion. Justify it."
"You bring twenty people in here," Adam told him, "and they'll all say the same thing. They'll all say you're ugly."
"Bring in twenty of me," Art said, "and we'd all say your ass is prettier than your face."
"There aren't twenty of you."
"No, you're right. I'm unique. So I can safely say that all androids find you ugly. Not all humans find me ugly. So, technically, I'm better looking than you, using objective criteria. — 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. — Bernard Beckett

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

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails. — Bernard Beckett

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

The Idea enters the brain from the outside. It rearranges the furniture to make it more to its liking. It finds other Ideas already in residence, and picks fights or forms alliances. The alliances build new structures, to defend themselves against intruders. — Bernard Beckett

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host. — Bernard Beckett

We have nothing but a history of our own invention to support this view. It suits us to believe it. It allows us to mistreat them, but convenience is not truth. — Bernard Beckett

I write with teenagers in mind. — Bernard Beckett

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times. — Bernard Beckett

You're still just silicon," he said, as he turned the page.
"And you're just carbon," Art persevered. "Since when has the periodic table been grounds for discrimination? — Bernard Beckett

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

Imagination is the bastard child of time and ignorance — 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. — Bernard Beckett

There is a fascination with fear. It grabs our attention. — Bernard Beckett

The puzzle of time, the mystery of creation, the problem of evil, the enigma of knowledge, the state of soul, the vexations of probability theory of the nature of God's grace, all reduced to a single question. What does it mean, in a world of God's creation, that man is free to choose between the paths of good and evil? — Bernard Beckett

our questions, but the need to do this — Bernard Beckett

Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory. — Bernard Beckett