“Have you ever considered the relationship of clinical paranoia to the phenomenon of religious conversion?”

—  William Gibson , book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 13

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Have you ever considered the relationship of clinical paranoia to the phenomenon of religious conversion?" by William Gibson?
William Gibson photo
William Gibson 117
American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder … 1948

Related quotes

“If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 96

Teal Swan photo

“There is a reason why I focus more in my carreer on practical things like relationships and what to do with emotions - it's because all of this interdimensional information that I could have a conversation about with you, DOES NOTHING FOR YOUR DAILY LIFE. Nothing. Really, it doesn't matter how many extraterrestrials there are in the universe and what they are doing in your day to day life… What matter's is whether you can have a relationship because life literally is relationships. Even if you want to have a conversation about the universe - it's about your relationship to the universe.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“A given phenomenon, today considered random, may tomorrow be considered determined because its causes will have been unraveled by thorough and specific study.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 279
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Context: Exceptional, unforeseeable, or even inexplicable phenomena would hence be fortuitous. these very vague adjectives too often have a merely circumstancial meaning. A given phenomenon, today considered random, may tomorrow be considered determined because its causes will have been unraveled by thorough and specific study.
Biologists, whose task is not to seek moral causes or intentions, must first of all make sure that so-called random facts really are random facts; they must constantly keep in mind Poincare's (1912b, p. 65) famous phrase: "Chance is only the measure of our ignorance."

Arthur Conan Doyle photo

“At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Quoted in Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food (New York: Norton & Company, 2009, ISBN 978-0-393-06595-4), p. 137 https://books.google.it/books?id=vqucAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137
Attributed

“Paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much.”

Thomas Pynchon book Bleeding Edge

Variant: Paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen
Source: Bleeding Edge (2013), p. 11

Leigh Hunt photo

“If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.”

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) English critic, essayist, poet and writer

Table-talk: To which are Added Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift

Charles Manson photo

“Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert? Watching, tuned in, completely aware. Christ on the cross, the coyote in the desert — it’s the same thing, man. The coyote is beautiful. He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves. He’s in a state of total paranoia, and total paranoia is total awareness.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Rolling Stone interview (June 1970)

“We can consider cellular energy conversions—like all other energy conversions—in the context of the laws of thermodynamics.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Biochemistry

Mircea Eliade photo

“A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it — the element of the sacred.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Patterns in Comparative Religion (1963), as translated by Rosemary Sheed, p. xiii

Related topics