"First, the fact he awoke at all. Cogito, ergo how the hell aren’t I dead?"

Ian Tregillis physics See all quotes by Ian Tregillis →

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“He’d expected torture. He hadn’t expected surgery.”

“Only a fool wasted energy on things he could not control.”

“Huygens, there are times when I take comfort in my sinful nature, for it means I’ll meet you in hell. I’ll be the one stomping on your jewels with singular dedication.”

“Sometimes the contortions required to spit on Occam’s razor were just as disturbing as the insights one yearned to avoid.”

“The grotesque machine reassembled its head. The medical servitor stood, emitted a burst of ticktock cog chatter, then flung itself into the massacre with the fervor of a religious zealot.”

““Absence of proof,” said Bell, “is not proof of absence.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Ideas about what happened after you died varied even among the priestly cast. Primitives were able to have more straightforward religions because they didn’t know any better. Once you knew even a litt…"

— Iain Banks

Literature1954–2013

#death

"This stuff's so fine Julius Caesar called for it with his dying breath. 'A toot, Brutus,' is what he said."

— Tom Robbins

Literature1932–2025

#death

"ow popular is the president? Normally, they lose seats when they are kind of average popular. If they are unpopular, it tends to have a magnifying effect. And we do know, from averaging all the polls …"

— Mike Murphy (political consultant)

Politics1958

#knowledge

"One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world."

— Edwin Lefèvre

Politics1871–1943

#knowledge