David Zindell Quotes & Sayings

Corporations continue to do their dirty work in poor countries. At the turn of the 21st century, the World Bank put pressure on Bolivia to privatize water services. Bechtel, the engineering giant, took control of this vital resource in Cochabamba. Bechtel's executives immediately raised the price of water so high that most people could not afford it. Its contract, made in collusion with the Bolivian government, gave Bechtel the right to charge people for water they took from their own wells. Bechtel even sent collectors into people's homes to demand payment for rainwater that people gathered in pots and pans on their roofs. — David Zindell

Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise — David Zindell

Beliefs are the eyelids of the mind. — David Zindell

But it is the nature of life that no emotion is meant to last forever ... — David Zindell

We are the eyes through which the Univers observes itself and knows itself divine. — David Zindell

The belly is the reason that man does not easily mistake himself for a god. — David Zindell

We walk the brink of racial suicide because we were smart enough to make atomic bombs and stupid enough to use them. — David Zindell

A man lusts to become a god ... and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder? — David Zindell

It's not enough to look for the truth, however a noble journey that might be. [ ... ] You must be able to say "yes" to what you see. [ ... ] He is the yeasayer who could look upon evil, disease and suffering, all the worst incarnations of the Eternal No, and not fall insane. He is the great-souled one who can affirm the truth of the Universe. — David Zindell

For it is only in accepting death that one can truly live, and for the human animal, death has always been the great black beast from the abyss to be dreaded or defeated or avoided or hated - but never looked upon clearly face to face. — David Zindell

[ ... ] when you look at the world, you put on the goggles of custom, habit and tribal wisdom lest the truth make you insane [ ... ] you see the world reflected in your own image; you see yourself reflected to the image of the world [ ... ] — David Zindell

The deep structure of the universe is pure consciousness. — David Zindell

There are three requisites for growth without bound, and only three: the will to remake oneself, the genius to survive, and the strength to suffer. — David Zindell

Reality [ ... ] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [ ... ]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [ ... ] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [ ... ] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live. — David Zindell

All men are warriors. And life for everything in our universe is nothing but war. — David Zindell

For our kind, there's always the burning to be more. ( ... ) that is why true human beings feel more pain. Because we are more, but it's never quite enough - never. — David Zindell

Self-creation is the highest art. — David Zindell

The number two, he thought, was an ominous number. Two is a reflection or duplication of one, the most perfect of the natural numbers. Two is all echo and counterpoise; two is the beginning of multiplicity, the way the universal oneness differentiates itself and breaks apart into strings and quarks and photons, all the separate and component pieces of life. Two is a symbol of becoming as opposed to pure being ... — David Zindell

The true human being ... is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities. — David Zindell

What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A ... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree. — David Zindell

Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality's particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things. This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.

~ David Zindell — David Zindell

Who would bring light must endure burning. — David Zindell

Life moved ever outward into infinite possibilities and yet all things were perfect and finished in every single moment, their end attained. — David Zindell

If you kill me, you kill yourself.
[ ... ]
He only wanted to convey to Janegg the truth of ahimsa, which is that all beings were connected to each other in the deepest way and thus it was impossible to harm another without harming oneself. — David Zindell

The universe evolves in consciousness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more and nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being. — David Zindell

It is both mysterious and miraculous that roughly the same intelligence necessary to flake a barbed spearpoint is sufficient to discover the theorems of mathematics. In a different universe, it might have been otherwise. And so human beings would have been spared the tragedy of existing half as ape and half as god. — David Zindell

Evil cannot be vanquished with a sword, and darkness cannot be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light. — David Zindell

For war is never some cosmic accident descending upon a people with all the chance and inevitability of asteroids falling like fire out of the heavens, but only the will and work of man. — David Zindell

I am not interested in things getting better; what I want is more: more human beings, more dreams, more history, more consciousness, more suffering, more joy, more disease, more agony, more rapture, more evolution, more life. — David Zindell