“There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one mind to know another, and how it is possible to know the contents of our own minds without resort to observation or evidence. It is a mistake, I shall urge, to suppose that these questions can be collapsed into two, or taken into isolation.”
“In mathematics or physics, infinity is greater than one or two or any number countable. In how many ways can the world be destroyed based on ordered knowledge? You may be able to count this. But the truth is, you “really” don’t know. These possibilities in your mind hold a set of unpredictable orders. One effect may be causative of another of another. It could be a culmination of effects you know as events where events are sets and subsets of potential possibilities. In how many ways can the world be destroyed based on unordered possibilities?”
“How deeply do any of us know our own selves? Ask yourself. We hold a picture of how we wish to be and hope it goes forever unchallenged. Passing through life never pursuing aspects of our natures with which we'd rather not reckon. Dying strangers to ourselves.”
“Once taken off one task without completing the transaction, the mind continues to seek closure. Fight to stay focused on the task at hand.”
“Zombieland reference," Jon said, nodding."How do you know that? That's a thousand-year-old reference!" I looked at laura. "I can't think of a single movie from a thousand years ago.""Uh...Betsy...""Don't say it." You know how you don't know how stupid something is until you hear yourself say it? That happened to me a lot.”
“But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the judgement forbid as it may.”
“The simple question 'What color do you want to paint that upstairs room?' might, if we follow things to their logical conclusions, be stated: 'How do I live, knowing that I will one day die and leave you?”