Author:: Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
Full Title:: The Three-Body Problem
Tags:#media/book
- themes::
- theme 1
- Summary::
- summary 1
* highlights from 2021-02-08
* There was no pain in that gaze, only solidified devotion and yearning. ([Location 94](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=94))
* “In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.” ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=179))
* “Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?” ([Location 192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=192))
* If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil? ([Location 340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=340))
* Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. ([Location 341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=341))
* as though a single flower was blooming in a metal ruin after a violent thunderstorm.… ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=798))
* Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current? ([Location 1018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=1018))
* He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body. ([Location 1185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=1185))
* The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed. The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked. But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became. ([Location 1823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=1823))
* “Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.” ([Location 1910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=1910))
* the man who feared nothing because he knew nothing. ([Location 2183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=2183))
* Everyone likes to reminisce, but no one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story. ([Location 2192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=2192))
* Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. ([Location 2576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=2576))
* “No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.” ([Location 2772](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=2772))
* Does it represent the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos? ([Location 3537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=3537))
* In the face of madness, rationality was powerless. ([Location 3918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=3918))
* Human civilization had finally given birth to a strong force of alienation. ([Location 4589](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=4589))
* It is, in fact, a giant in four-space, and our world is like a thin, three-dimensional sheet of paper. The giant stands on this sheet of paper, and we can only see the trace where its feet touch the paper.” ([Location 5480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=5480))
* The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated. ([Location 5655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=5655))
* The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ([Location 5732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=5732))
* Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains. ([Location 5738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00IQO403K&location=5738))