“Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed.”
Tower of Babylon; first appeared in Omni, 1990.
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
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Ted Chiang 11
American science fiction writer 1967Related quotes

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

Joseph Kosuth, “Introduction” in Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1960–1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); cited in: Thierry Mortier. " Semiotics as Art: Kosuth http://www.semionaut.net/semiotics-as-art-joseph-kosuth/," Sunday, 1 July 2012.

Sect. 1: Pioneering Days
"Computers Then and Now" (1968)

“All the Traps of Earth” (pp. 190-191); closing words.
Short Fiction, Skirmish (1977)
Context: Perhaps all that had happened had been no more than the working out of human destiny. If the human race could not attain directly the paranormal power he held, this instinct of the mind, then they would gain it indirectly through the agency of one of their creations. Perhaps this, after all, unknown to Man himself, had been the prime purpose of the robots.
He turned and walked slowly down the length of village street, his back turned to the ship and the roaring of the captain, walked contentedly into this new world he'd found, into this world that he would make — not for himself, nor for robotic glory, but for a better Mankind and a happier.
Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet.
But that was wrong, he told himself. The trap had not been on this world at all, nor any other world. It had been inside himself.
He walked serenely down the wagon-rutted track in the soft, golden afternoon of a matchless autumn day, with the dog trotting at his heels.
Somewhere, just down the street, the sick baby lay crying in its crib.

The Killing Season, Episode three: The Long Shadow (2010–13)

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
Found attributed to Michelangelo in non-specialist publications as early as 1929 https://books.google.com/books?id=-0YhAQAAMAAJ&dq=If+people+knew+how+hard+I+had+to+work+to+gain+my+mastery%2C+it+would+not+seem+so+wonderful+at+all.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=michelangelo, but no source is known. Not found in any known biography of Michelangelo.
Disputed

“If you ask three philosophers how social constructs work, you'll get four theories.”
Philosophy Tube

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 53