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"But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme."
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!["But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme."](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==)
Exlpore more Cognition quotes
"The subconscious mind does not care about what we consciously call reality."
"One lives and analyses data within a frame, unaware that the solution is most often just outside of that frame. Never underestimate the depth of your subjectivity."
"The mind is a neural computer."
"A single thought can shift your entire world."
"Not this in-between thing that Levi had, where his brain could catch the words but couldn't hold on to them."
"A circle drawn on a blackboard, a right triangle, a rhombus--all these are forms we can fully intuit; Ireneo could do the same with the stormy mane of a young colt, a small herd of cattle on a mountainside, a flickering fire and its uncountable ashes, and the many faces of a dead man at a wake. I have no idea how many stars he saw in the sky."
"The concern of your brain is not to see the actual nature of reality, but to represent the reality to you in such a way that suits your needs."
Explore more quotes by Arthur C. Clarke
"This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, 'Mere dead matter' was one of their favourite phrases."
"And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known before. When- which was not often, but sometimes happened- they burst into tears of utter frustration or despair, their tiny disappointments seemed to him more tragic than Man's long retreat after the loss of his Galactic Empire. That was something too huge and remote for comprehension, but the weeping of a child could pierce one to the heart.Alvin had met love in Diaspar, but now he was learning something equally precious, and without which love itself could never reach its highest fulfillment but must remain forever incomplete. He was learning tenderness."
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
"There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence-or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them."
"Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time."
"Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better."
"Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains, they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented."
"Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity."
"There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality."
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