Quotes from Ted Chiang

I don't delude myself with either self-pity or conceit: I can evaluate my own psychological state with the utmost objectivity and consistency. I know precisely which emotional resources I have and which I lack, and how much value I place on each. I have no regrets.

the ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving

Restoring the air supply cannot re-create what has evanesced.

Todos mis deseos y reflexiones no son ni más ni menos que remolinos generados por la exhalación paulatina de nuestro universo. Y hasta el momento en que esta gran exhalación termine, mis pensamientos proseguirán.

Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.

You see, the foundations of our culture were laid in classical Greece, where physical beauty and the body were celebrated. But our culture is also thoroughly permeated by the monotheistic tradition, which devalues the body in favor of the soul.

My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important; what's important is your belief,

As a journalist, I have long appreciated the usefulness of lifelogging for determining the facts of the matter. There is scarcely a legal proceeding, criminal or civil, that doesn't make use of someone's lifelog, and rightly so. When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can't have justice until you know the truth.

if (they) wish to love God, (they) be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.

While this perhaps does not constitute air sharing in the strictest sense, there is camaraderie derived from the awareness that all our air comes from the same source, for the dispensers are but the exposed terminals of pipes extending from the reservoir of air deep underground, the great lung of the world, the source of all our nourishment.

We like the idea that there's always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there's someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone's control.

Even if a universes's life span is calculable , the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we've led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable... The fact that it {universe} spawned such plenitude is a miracle...

For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place.

There are no shortcuts. If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task... experience is algorithmically incompressible.

InstantRapport is one of the smart transdermals, a patch that delivers doses of an oxytocin-opioid cocktail whenever the wearer is in the presence of a specific person. It's used to strengthen rocky marriages and strained parent-child relationships, and it's recently become available without a prescription.

Which is why I have written this account. You, I hope, are one of those explorers. You, I hope, found these sheets of copper and deciphered the words engraved on their surfaces. And whether or not your brain is impelled by the air that once impelled mine, through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

They applauded when I had finished speaking, and I admit that I took pleasure from that. Forgive me for my pride, Lord. Help me to remember that all the work I do—whether it is excavating bones in the desert or giving lectures to the public—is not for my own glory, but for yours. Let me never forget that my task is to show others the beauty of your works and in doing so bring them closer to you. Amen.

Por un lado está la verdad de los hechos; por el otro, la verdad del sentimiento del autor, y donde coinciden las dos ninguna autoridad externa puede prestarse a decidirlo.

we're seeing more beauty in one day than our ancestors did in a lifetime. And the result is that beauty is slowly ruining our lives.

words differently each time he told it; he was skilled enough as a storyteller that the arrangement of words didn't matter. It was different for Moseby, who never acted anything out when he gave his sermons; for him, the words were what was important. Jijingi realized that Moseby wrote down his sermons not because his memory was terrible but because he was looking for a specific arrangement of words. Once he found the one he wanted, he could hold on to it for as long as he needed.

The idea of love with no strings attached is as much a fantasy as what Binary Desire is selling. Loving someone means making sacrifices for them.

La gente está hecha de historias. Nuestros recuerdos no son la acumulación imparcial de cada uno de los segundos que hemos vivido; son la narrativa que hemos ensamblado a partir de momentos escogidos. Y es por eso que, aun cuando hayamos experimentados los mismos acontecimientos que otros individuos, nunca construiremos narrativas idénticas: los criterios empleados para seleccionar momentos son distintos para cada cual, y un reflejo de nuestras personalidades.

This is classic PR: hide behind a nice-sounding name, and create the impression of a third party looking out for the consumer's interests.

The universe is so vast that intelligent life must surely have arisen many times. The universe is also so old that even one technological species would have had time to expand and fill the galaxy. Yet there is no sign of life anywhere except on Earth. Humans call this the Fermi Paradox. One proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders.