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Bernard Beckett Biography

Bernard Beckett (born 1967) is a New Zealand writer of fiction for young adults. His work includes novels and plays. Beckett has taught Drama, Mathematics and English at a number of high schools in the Wellington Region, and is currently teaching students at Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt.

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Bernard Beckett Quotes

But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.

Fear, Grip, Memories, Routine, Terror, Time Passes

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism.

Curiosity, Face, Optimism, Spirit, Superstitions, Uncertainty

. . . from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

Clear, Fear, Point, Population, Vantage Point

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

Action, Course, Failing, Fails, Sometimes

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.

Brain, Ideas, Machines, Parlance, Way, Works

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.

Idea, Ideas, Machine, Machines, Mind, Resists

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Abstraction, Littles, Predicting, Technical, Thinking, Way

Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

Fear, Midst, Misfortune, Monsters, People, Scheme

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

Came, Idea, Ideas, Mind, Together

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

Cause, Needs, Simple, Superstition, Views

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Conflict, Convinced, Exposed, History, Tendencies, Tendency

A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.

Fears, Knowledge, Society

Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

Indifference, Plague, Saying, Society, Wracked

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.

Differences, Fear, Fearful, Optimistic, Superstition

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.

Believe, Created, Everywhere, Level, Media, Names

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.

Exist, Host, Like, Parasites, Thought

I cant see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but theres no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.

Ability, Access, Belief, Good, Take, World

Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.

Accessing, Consciousness, Feels, Memories, Memory

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

Building, Hero, Stupid, Uncertainty, World