“And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?”

Source: Culture series, Consider Phlebas (1987), Chapter 2 “The Hand of God 137” (p. 27).

Source: The Last Colony (2007), Chapter 4 (p. 72)

March 17
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Introduction to The Annotated Alice (1960) // The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition (1999), by Lewis Carroll (Author, Christ Church College, Oxford), John Tenniel (Illustrated by), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduction and notes by), page viii
Context: The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.

Source: Brisingr

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 9