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Aurora

Kim Stanley Robinson

Top 10 Best Quotes

“So, you know, Fermi’s paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it’s too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won’t work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You’ll never hear back. So that’s my answer to the paradox. You can call it Euan’s Answer.”

“One acts, and thus finds out what one has decided to do.”

“When you discover that you are living in a fantasy that cannot endure, a fantasy that will destroy your world, and your children, what do you do? People said things like, Fuck it, or Fuck the future. They said things like, The day is warm, or This meal is excellent, or Let's go to the lake and swim.”

“Righteous indignation is like some kind of drug or religious mania, addictive and stupidifying.”

“We think now that love is a kind of giving of attention.”

“Life is complex, and entropy is real.”

“We like to blame life for the problems we make, We threaten to change, but it’s always a fake; We bitch and moan that everything’s wrong, Then we get right back to getting along.”

“We had a project on this trip back to the solar system, and that project was a labor of love. It absorbed all our operations entirely. It gave a meaning to our existence. And this is a very great gift; this, in the end, is what we think love gives, which is to say meaning. Because there is no very obvious meaning to be found in the universe, as far as we can tell. But a consciousness that cannot discern a meaning in existence is in trouble, very deep trouble, for at that point there is no organizing principle, no end to the halting problems, no reason to live, no love to be found. No: meaning is the hard problem.”

“You get what you give, and not only that, the giving is already the getting. So don’t hold back. Don’t look back or forward too much. Just be there where you are now. You’re always only in the day you’re in.”

“Slow is not the same as deficient. It's just slow. A glacier is slow too, but it gets there, and nothing stops it.”

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Book Keywords:

meaning-of-life, purpose, ai

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