“Man's bodily functions moved only toward death, but the mind could continue to enrich itself even as everything else embraced entropy.”

“The only thing about a man that is a man… is his mind. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse.”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”

Philip K. Dick book Galactic Pot-Healer

“The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

“When it comes to understanding the future, history is bunk (…) There is no place history is heading, except toward the maximum-entropy heat death of the universe.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

“Only death can finish the fight, everything else only interrupts the fighting.”

Andrzej Sapkowski (1948) Novelist

“Life continued, the wheel turned, the earth moved, and even death—that delightful biological necessity—was an aspect of life.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

“An arrow has one motion and the mind another. Even when pausing, even when weighing conclusions, the mind is moving forward, toward its goal.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

“I could have fixed almost everything else, but death defeated me every time.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo