"These songs were the true names of things, spoken by the soul, so easily buried under the little busynesses of everyman everyday."

Ian McDonald Literature See all quotes by Ian McDonald →

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“Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years.”

“He has no belief—faith is beneath his dignity—but he enjoys the designed madness of religion.”

“A chilly piety leaked into the air.”

“Ayşe Erkoç learned long ago that the secret of doing anything illicit in Istanbul is to do it in full public gaze in the clear light of day. No one ever questions the legitimacy of the blatant.”

“Legends should stay legends; otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.”

“It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned, questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than sol…"

— Bernard of Clairvaux

Religion1090–1153

#faith

"The wheel may be one of those cases where the engineering solution can be seen in plain view, yet be unattainable in evolution because it lies the other side of a deep valley, cutting unbridgeably acr…"

— Richard Dawkins

Science1941

#truth

"I always said that in a country where a legislature, its sessions limited by statute, could alter reality by turning back the clock , any travesty was possible. I see nothing lately to prove me wrong."

— L. Neil Smith

Literature1946–2021

#truth

"The true source of wealth, Eugen Loebl concluded while brooding about economics during his fifteen years as a political prisoner in Czechoslovakia, is not its productivity, its Gross National Product,…"

— Marilyn Ferguson

Literature1938–2008

#truth