It is a scholar’s task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it’s no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in … - Mary Doria Russell

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It is a scholar’s task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it’s no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in the stars. The question is, Have you discovered a preexisting truth? Or have you imposed an arbitrary meaning on whatever it is you’re considering?

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About Mary Doria Russell

Mary Doria Russell (born August 19, 1950) is an American author. Russell has become widely known for her two novels which explore one of science fiction's oldest concepts: first contact with aliens. In this framework she also explores the even older issue of how one can reconcile the idea of a benevolent deity with pain and evil in the world.

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Additional quotes by Mary Doria Russell

A thousand times, they nearly killed themselves off with political bickering and moral certainty and a lethal distaste for compromise. A thousand times they might have become nothing but a memory in the mind of God.

it seemed entirely possible to him that religion and literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly’s wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly. We are biologically driven to create meaning. And if that’s so, he asked himself, is the miracle diminished? It

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