Quotes from Ted Chiang

So you see, this debate isn't just about commercials and cosmetics, it's about determining what's the appropriate relationship between the mind and the body. Are we more fully realized when we minimize the physical part of our natures? And that, you have to agree, is a profound question.

If so, those few will be able to remain conscious right up to the final moments before all pressure is equalized.

Human activity has brought my kind to the brink of extinction, but I don't blame them for it. They didn't do it maliciously. They just weren't paying attention.

Lord, perhaps you don't hear my prayers. But I've never prayed with the expectation that it would affect your actions; I prayed with the expectation that it would affect mine. So I pray now, for the first time in two months, because even if you're not listening, I need the clarity of thought that prayer provides.

Of course beauty has been used as a tool of oppression, but eliminating beauty is not the answer; you can't liberate people by narrowing the scope of their experiences. That's positively Orwellian. What's needed is a woman-centered concept of beauty, one that lets all women feel good about themselves instead of making most of them feel bad.

He hadn't been cursed or blessed in any obvious way, and he didn't know what message he was intended to receive.

What I'll think is that you are clearly, maddeningly not me. It will remind me, again, that you won't be a clone of me; you can be wonderful, a daily delight, but you won't be someone I could have created by myself. —

You can't assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Blue Gamma has done what it can to minimize abuses; all the Neuroblast digients are equipped with pain circuit breakers, which render them immune to torture and thus unappealing to sadists. Unfortunately, there's no way to protect the digients from things like simple neglect.

right now your digients, amazing as they are, have no marketable job skills, and you can't predict when they'll get any. How else are you going to raise the money you need?" How many women have asked themselves the same question, Ana wonders. "So it's the oldest profession.

Temporary becomes indefinite becomes permanent.

no one can deny the differences between the populaces of nations, in both physical appearance and temperament. This can only be the result of the maternal influence: the mother's womb is a vessel in which the social environment is incarnated. For example,

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity

Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.

This search is my purpose; not because you chose it for me, Lord, but because I chose it for myself. Amen.

Perhaps I'm merely envious of the Church's ability to raise money; forgive me for that, Lord. They are trying to celebrate your glory, Lord, just as we in the scientific community are, so I cannot disagree with them too strenuously. Our commonalities are more important than our differences.

Raising a child, she said, "puts you in touch, deeply, inescapably, daily, with some pretty heady issues: What is love and how do we get ours? Why does the world contain evil and pain and loss? How can we discover dignity and tolerance? Who is in power and why? What's the best way to resolve conflict?

the Europeans often believe paper over people.

if the situation of the working classes was improved in the manner he hoped, that might demonstrate to the nobility that poverty was not innate.

Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose.

When a prism was activated, a quantum measurement was performed inside the device, with two possible outcomes of equal probability:

they gave thanks that they were permitted to see so much, and begged forgiveness for their desire to see more.

Director of the CIA was aware of a terrorist group's plan to bomb the Washington, D.C., metro system. He let the bombing occur, in order to gain congressional approval for the use of extreme measures against that group.

But what if that's not true? What if"—his voice cracked—"what if God had no intentions about us at all?