In this environment it was a simple matter for The Republic to maintain its structure. People did as they were told because they were working together, focused on a common threat, a shared enemy. But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.

Bernard Beckett

Categorized in : Memories Routine Time Passes

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

Bernard Beckett

mind faces trying

The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.

Bernard Beckett

host together ideas

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Bernard Beckett

tendencies conflict history

I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.

Bernard Beckett

bleeding feelings hands

In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

Bernard Beckett

dying waiting book

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.

Bernard Beckett

parasites host

In the end, living is defined by dying.

Bernard Beckett

dying ends death

I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.

Bernard Beckett

book people ideas

Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.

Bernard Beckett

consciousness feels memories

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.

Bernard Beckett

optimism superstitions curiosity

Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

Bernard Beckett

fear monsters people

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

Bernard Beckett

plague indifference

... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

Bernard Beckett

vantage-point population fear

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

Bernard Beckett

knowledge

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.

Bernard Beckett

media names believe

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

Bernard Beckett

mind together ideas

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

Bernard Beckett

failing action sometimes

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Bernard Beckett

littles way thinking

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

Bernard Beckett

simple views needs

Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. Its very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover Gods great plan.

Bernard Beckett

our-world different men