Aaron Thier Quotes

• “The world is a narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “Science and philosophy notwithstanding, sometimes our best course is to make light of Yahweh’s existence, just as we learn to joke ruefully about the chilling fact of our inevitable death. Otherwise we have no chance of existing without going mad.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “After all, the first truth of existence is that none of us start out as willing participants.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “The alcalde tells me that it isn't kind to interrupt. In reply I begin to open my dress, so he can see what God has given me. I smile as an iguana smiles. He looks away.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “We'll go to El Dorado together. You'll have your vengeance and I'll have my woman. We have all the time in the world, but let's hope it doesn't take that long.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “They visit the Grand Canyon, where they reflect that the most remarkable feature of this geological formation is that it’s not disappointing.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “We have to discuss something. Food without discussion has no taste.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “They are alien and remote. They’ve outgrown their tree-ness and they brush the next rung on the avatar ladder. It’s like John Muir says: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “For a while they discuss Alexander Grothendieck, who contributed so much to pure math and then ended his life in monkish solitude in the Pyrenees, eating dandelion soup and worrying that an evil metaphysical force had perverted the harmony of the universe.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “They’ve been discussing what they call “mathematical avatars.” The idea, as far as Murphy and Eva can determine, is that each mathematical category, each mathematical entity, maybe even each mathematical theory, is the manifestation of something larger and more abstract. You climb the avatar ladder into a region of greater and greater generality. The problem is that there are an infinite number of ladders, so there can’t ever be a unified theory of pure math. “And maybe,” one of the panelists says, “the whole thing is based on the wrong assumptions.” There’s some comfort here. If Yahweh is an avatar in the original Hindu sense, then there must be something beyond Yahweh, a larger and greater divinity, or sequence of divinities. That sounds a little like the Gnostic explanation, and if it’s true, then it’s likely that violence and hate do not proceed exclusively from man or exclusively from Yahweh. Instead we are all just individual actors doing what we can on this plane of reality, and there are other planes, and competing influences or forces on every plane.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “It’s like George Bernard Shaw says: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “I asked him had he ever seen this Anna Gloria? Was she real, or was she only allegorical?
  "That depends," he said. "What is the difference?”

  Aaron Thier

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• “Life is what it is, and either you accept it or you don’t. Either you let the current sweep you out to sea or you swim against the current as it sweeps you out to sea.”

  Aaron Thier

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• “The real God,” says Eva, “is the idea of there being an idea of there being a something that’s not something. Right? Or else it’s the place where grace comes from. Is it crazy to talk about grace?” “Call it goodness. Or just that feeling. It has to come from somewhere.”

  Aaron Thier

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