“Who has sent this new serpent into our ruinous garden, already too fouled, too crowded to qualify as any locus of innocence — unless innocence be our age's neutral, our silent passing into the machineries of indifference — something that Kekulé's Serpent had come to — not to destroy, but to define to us the loss of… we had been given certain molecules, certain combinations and not others… we used what we found in Nature, unquestioning, shamefully perhaps — but the Serpent whispered, 'They can be changed, and new molecules assembled from the debris of the given…. ' Can anyone tell me what else he whispered to us? Come — who knows?”
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
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Thomas Pynchon 134
American novelist 1937Related quotes

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Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. … And he gave them a formula for action, "Be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." … We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

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"Remarks at a Closed-circuit Television Broadcast on Behalf of the National Cultural Center (527)" (29 November 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1962