Liu Cixin
Quotes by Liu Cixin
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Everything you see before you is the result of poverty. But how are things any better in the wealthy countries? They protect their own environments, but then shift the heavily polluting industries to the poorer nations.
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A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.
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Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.
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Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted fie thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time.
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A newly formed planet appeared on the large screen. its surface was till red-hot, like a piece of charcoal fresh out of the furnace. Time passed at the rate of geological eras, and the planet gradually cooled. The color and patterns on the surface slowly shifted in a hypnotic manner. A few minutes later, an orange planet appeared on the screen, indicating the end of the simulation run.The computations were done at the coarsest level; to do it with more precision would require over a month. Green Glasses moved the mouse and zoomed in on the surface of the planet. The view swept over a broad desert, over a cluster of strangely shaped, towering mountain peaks, over a circular depression like an impact crater.What are we looking at? Yang Dong asked.Earth. Without life, this is what the surface of the planet would look like now.But . . . where are the oceans?There are no oceans. No rivers either. The entire surface is dry.Your'e saying that without life, liquid water would not exist on Earth?The reality would probably be even more shocking. Remember, this is only a coarse simulation, but at least you can see how much of an impact life had in the present state of the Earth.But--Do you think life is nothing but a fragile, thin, soft shell clinging to the surface of this planet?Isn't it?Only if you neglect the power of time. If a colony of ants continue to move clods the size of grains of rice, they could remove all of Mount Tai in a billion years. As long as you give it enough time, life is stronger than metal and stone, more powerful than typhoons and volcanoes.
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A newly formed planet appeared on the large screen. its surface was till red-hot, like a piece of charcoal fresh out of the furnace. Time passed at the rate of geological eras, and the planet gradually cooled. The color and patterns on the surface slowly shifted in a hypnotic manner. A few minutes later, an orange planet appeared on the screen, indicating the end of the simulation run.The computations were done at the coarsest level; to do it with more precision would require over a month. Green Glasses moved the mouse and zoomed in on the surface of the planet. The view swept over a broad desert, over a cluster of strangely shaped, towering mountain peaks, over a circular depression like an impact crater.What are we looking at? Yang Dong asked.Earth. Without life, this is what the surface of the planet would look like now.But . . . where are the oceans?There are no oceans. No rivers either. The entire surface is dry.Your'e saying that without life, liquid water would not exist on Earth?The reality would probably be even more shocking. Remember, this is only a coarse simulation, but at least you can see how much of an impact life had in the present state of the Earth.But--Do you think life is nothing but a fragile, thin, soft shell clinging to the surface of this planet?Isn't it?Only if you neglect the power of time. If a colony of ants continue to move clods the size of grains of rice, they could remove all of Mount Tai in a billion years. As long as you give it enough time, life is stronger than metal and stone, more powerful than typhoons and volcanoes.
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A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.
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Everything you see before you is the result of poverty. But how are things any better in the wealthy countries? They protect their own environments, but then shift the heavily polluting industries to the poorer nations.
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Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted fie thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time.
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Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.
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I'm absolutely positive about human survival. We will continue to develop our civilisation and expand not just on Earth, but also across the solar system, the galaxy, even the entire universe.
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The earth's crust is very thin but the planet can act as a spaceship if a force or energy powerful enough was exerted on it, to eject it from the solar system. But its mantle and core may leak due to inertia, causing the planet to disintegrate.
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Perhaps in ten thousand years, the starry sky that humankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent. But perhaps tomorrow we'll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the Moon parked in orbit.
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Our reality is narrow, confined, and fleeting. Whatever we think is important right now, in our mundane lives, will no longer be important against a grander sense of time and space.
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In the Chinese subconscious, the universe exists on a timeline that extends into the future without end, and also without change.
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Sci-fi novels are concerned with problems faced by all of humanity. Crises in sci-fi mostly threaten humanity as a whole. This is a unique and treasurable trait inherent in the genre - that the human race is perceived as a single entity, undivided.
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Facing ultimate destruction and the end of the world, human society will undergo extreme, complex, and profound transformations.
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Unexpectedly, 'Death's End' turned into a major success. It made a much bigger impact than the first two books in the series and became a bestseller.
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I do think that science fiction ideas are best expressed through visual media like film and TV. Realist literature depicts things that we have seen in life, but science fiction is different: what it depicts exists only in the author's imagination. When it comes to science fiction, the written word is inadequate.
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