“BERISH: I distrust miracles. They exist only in books, and books say anything.”
Act I (p. 40)
The Trial of God (1979)
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Elie Wiesel 155
writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and … 1928–2016Related quotes
Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"
Context: I cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of great extra-social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the machine. They may be idealists and desire to make a new world, or they may simply be artists, loving for its own sake the pursuit of truth. If I were to hazard a guess, I should say that it took both types to bring about results, for the second find the knowledge and the first the will to use it.
“There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
“I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.”
Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
Book VI: Ch. 8: Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
Context: I halt at the beginning of my travels, in Pennsylvania, in order to compare Washington and Bonaparte. I would rather not have concerned myself with them until the point where I had met Napoleon; but if I came to the edge of my grave without having reached the year 1814 in my tale, no one would then know anything of what I would have written concerning these two representatives of Providence. I remember Castelnau: like me Ambassador to England, who wrote like me a narrative of his life in London. On the last page of Book VII, he says to his son: ‘I will deal with this event in Book VIII,’ and Book VIII of Castelnau’s Memoirs does not exist: that warns me to take advantage of being alive.
Pursuance of truth requires consideration of a creator. If you define science to exclude the possibility of a creator, it isn’t a pursuance of truth.
The universe as accepted by science in terms of size and age is not big enough or old enough to explain evolution.
Q&A: ‘Expelled’s’ Robert Marks, From an interview with Jerry Pierce, 2008-01-28, 2008-02-18 http://www.sbtexan.com/default.asp?action=article&aid=5534&issue=2/4/2008,
Guest of Honor speech at Aussiecon Two (43rd World Science Fiction Convention, August 1985), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction
“I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.”
Source: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood