Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Iain M. Banks

Quote by Iain M. Banks

“It was the soul of the machine, the ethological epicentre, the planetary ground zero of their commercial energy. I could almost feel it, shivering down like bomb-blasted rivers of glass from these undreaming towers of dark and light invading the snow-dark sky.”

Quote by Iain M. Banks

Book:The State of the Art
Create image

Work

The State of the Art

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Iain M. Banks

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Iain M. Banks. more

You May Also Like

“I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.”

ReligionSinResponsibilityForgivenessRedemptionImmoralityAbsolutionScapegoating
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
Create image