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Quote by Neal Barrett Jr.

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The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eleventh Annual Collection

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Neal Barrett Jr.

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“And sure we may The same too of the Present say, If Past, and Future Times do thee obey. Thou stopst this Current, and dost make This running River settle like a Lake, Thy certain hand holds fast this slippery Snake. The Fruit which does so quickly wast, Men scarce can see it, much less tast, Thou Comfitest in Sweets to make it last. This shining piece of Ice Which melts so soon away With the Suns ray, Thy Verse does solidate and Chrystallize. Till it a lasting Mirror be; Nay thy Immortal Rhyme Makes this one short Point of Time, To fill up half the Orb of Round Eternity.”

ReasonRhyme
Author:Abraham Cowley
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“I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”

LifeJoySecurityAdventureConformity
Book:Into the Wild
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“The scientific method liberates us to pursue truth regardless of who we are. Similarly, evolutionary psychology, a discipline viscerally despised by many progressives, is expressly anti-racist in that it recognizes that underneath many of our surface differences, human minds were borne of the same evolutionary forces irrespective of our racial or ethnic backgrounds. Environmental forces (or culture) do affect our thinking styles, reasoning, and decision making, but these effects are not immutable elements of one’s race or ethnicity. There is no “black mind” or “white mind,” no “white male way of knowing” or “indigenous way of knowing,” there is only one truth, and we find it through the scientific method.”

ReasonEvolutionary PsychologyScientific Method
Book:Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense
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“What rationalism from d’Alembert to Dawkins is loath to acknowledge is that human rationality is a corporeal one. We think as we do roughly because of the kind of bodies we have, as Thomas Aquinas noted. Reason is authentically rational only when it is rooted in what lies beyond itself. It must find its home in what is other than reason, which is not to say in what is inimical to it. Any form of reason which grasps itself purely in terms of ideas, and then fumbles for some less cerebral way in which to connect with the sensory world, is debilitated from the outset.”

IdeasReasonMaterialismIdealismThe Body
Book:Culture and the Death of God
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