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  "title": "The Visitor",
  "slug": "the-visitor",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor",
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  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor.md",
  "author": {
    "name": "Sheri S. Tepper",
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      "slug": "i-know-so-little",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/i-know-so-little",
      "text": "“I know so little,” she murmured.\n\n“Better admit you are up to your neck in ignorance than stand upon a pinnacle of misinformation,” he said firmly.",
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      "slug": "many-men-of-importance",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/many-men-of-importance",
      "text": "Many men of importance were gathered there to be seen talking with other men of importance, resulting in an abundance of conspicuous but immaterial discourse.",
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      "slug": "janet-snarled-nell",
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      "text": "Janet snarled, “Nell, who made you the arbiter of what’s Right and wrong or wrong?”\n\nNell thumped the table. “I’m not making a moral judgment, I’m making a pragmatic one! Before the Happening, the world was full of people, and we were using up the Earth’s resources at a fantastic rate. Somehow we felt we’d find some other world before we used up this one, and going to space was a spectator sport. That game’s over. We’re not going anywhere! Therefore, all the attitudes that led to use-up-the-world-and-leave-it-behind are wrong for us, and whatever attitudes keep the Earth fit for what people and animals are left is right for us, and I defy you to come up with any better definition.”",
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      "page": 226,
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      "slug": "the-sooner-we-can",
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      "text": "The sooner we can separate salvageable skeptics from self-righteous absolutists, the sooner we can move along.",
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      "slug": "sacrifice-for-sacrifices",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/sacrifice-for-sacrifices",
      "text": "Sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake does no one any good!",
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      "slug": "she-had-grown",
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      "text": "She had grown through loss and confusion into a girl who lived almost entirely inside her head, taking refuge in the places she created there, not so much repulsed by others’ reality as unable to perceive it.",
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      "slug": "personal-beliefs-are",
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      "text": "Personal beliefs are unarguable, even if the other side has all the facts.",
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      "text": "I’ve come to believe, from experience and reading and what I’ve learned on the outside, that the Regime—I suppose really, one might say any regime—is rather like a pot of porridge. If vigorously stirred every now and then, it can be a nourishing if not always tasty staple, but if left on the heat unstirred for some time it becomes increasing stodgy. If left untended, it can char into an immovable solid, like coal.\n\nThereafter, it is incapable of being stirred, incapable of providing nourishment. When a regime is like that, citizens have to resort to bribery or lawbreaking to do quite necessary things like digging wells or fixing roads, thus joining corruption to congealment.",
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      "slug": "the-sergeant-was",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/the-sergeant-was",
      "text": "The sergeant was braver than most, and stupider—the two qualities often going hand in hand.",
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      "slug": "they-were-always",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/they-were-always",
      "text": "“They were always telling me their way is the only way to go!”\n\n“Oh, no, my dear. No, not at all. So long as it harms no one else, one’s own way is always preferable.”",
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      "id": "aa6c61e7-0752-41d8-9bc5-00a2ef25ba7f",
      "slug": "as-everybodys-god",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/as-everybodys-god",
      "text": "“As everybody’s god, what will you do?” The doctor demanded.\n\n“You mean immediately?” asked the small god. “I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that will inevitably be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay...Also, I will be capricious. I’ll reward and punish arbitrarily. I’ll peek through bedroom windows and admonish what I see there, sometimes one thing, sometimes the opposite. I will have purposes men know nothing of, and when men begin to catch on to them, I will change them. This will convince some of your people that I am unreliable...Occasionally, I will do a conspicuous miracle to save one dying child while a thousand children starve elsewhere. This will convince sensible people I am perverse, and they will curse my name. Be sure to recruit those who do, they’ll be invaluable. Only by repudiating both devils and small gods will they ever know the Real One.\n\nI will be a sham, but not a snob. I will let every man, woman, or child, no matter how greedy or wicked, claim to have a personal relationship with me. In other words, I will be as arbitrary, inconsistent, ignorant, pushy, and common as humans are, and what more have they ever wanted in a god?”\n\n“The truth!” cried the doctor and Arnole, simultaneously...\n\n“Oh, tush, they never wanted anything of the kind. Creation has the truth written all over it—the age of the universe, the history of the world—but nine-tenths of mankind either don’t know it or think it’s a sham, because it isn’t what their book or their prophet says, and it isn’t cozy or manipulable enough.”\n\n”My people wanted truth,” said Nell, stiffly. “My friends.”\n\n“They were a minority. Not many years before the Happening, one of your country’s largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They’re correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.”",
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      "slug": "you-asked-for",
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      "text": "You asked for wisdom? Hear these words. Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.",
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      "slug": "i-suspect-theres",
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      "text": "I suspect there’s little difference between whim and inspiration at the beginning of any chain of events. It’s what happens later that tells us which is which.",
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      "slug": "humans-are-unique",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/humans-are-unique",
      "text": "“Humans are unique in holding their gods so cheap they peck at them like pigeons, constantly intruding upon them with prayer! Prayer from all sides of every conflict, prayer before each contest, during every issue. Private prayer, public prayer, shepherded prayer baa-ed from congregation, sports prayer before games, prayer parroted and prayer spontaneous, endless instructions to god, endless...plockutta.\n\n“‘Intercede for me and solve my problems; give me, grant us; hear the words I’m saying; suspend the laws of nature in this instance; cure her; save him; don’t let them; listen to me; do this!’” The Visitor sighed. “Beneath it, one hears devils’ laughter.”",
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      "slug": "being-an-immortal",
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      "text": "Being an immortal doesn’t matter to me. If one looks out into the universe and perceives what true immortality would mean in terms of time and space, it takes monstrous hubris to even conceive of personal immortality, much less desire it.",
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      "slug": "no-matter-who",
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      "text": "“No matter who I ask, they answer out of the Dicta! Even when it doesn’t fit.”\n\n“Doing such is not a new thing. In the former world, there were people who said all truth was contained in this or that holy book, this or that holy image, these or those holy beliefs. No matter how complicated their world became, no matter how much it changed, the only answers permitted were those that grew ever more tortuous and convoluted.”\n\n“Until?”\n\n“Until, some say, God turned his back on them for their failure to use the minds they had been given.”",
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          "slug": "thinking",
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        {
          "name": "fanaticism",
          "slug": "fanaticism",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fanaticism"
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      "slug": "magic-cried-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/magic-cried-the",
      "text": "“Magic!” cried the demon. “Miracle! What difference between the two?”\n\n“There is no difference at all,” said Galenor. “Except that people allow themselves to believe an event if it’s called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it’s called magic. Or vice versa.",
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      "slug": "to-the-chasmites",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/to-the-chasmites",
      "text": "To the Chasmites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar?",
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      "slug": "i-mentioned-that",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/i-mentioned-that",
      "text": "I mentioned that the small god said she brought the asteroid because of what man had become, and they retorted that man might not have become that if we had been relentless in our education of our young people and had not perpetuated ignorance under the guise of cultural sensitivity and the politically correct.",
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    {
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      "slug": "your-leaders-worshipped",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/your-leaders-worshipped",
      "text": "Your leaders worshipped the greed devil when they sold their votes and influence to spread bad stuff; they worshipped the power devil when they valued votes over the health of the planet; they made a pretence of mercy and justice by advocating human rights while they sucked up to dominance devils whose law was torture and whose rule was the enslavement of women.",
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      "slug": "aside-from-earning",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/aside-from-earning",
      "text": "Aside from earning their livings, what did your people do, mostly? Games. Sports. Casinos. Loud machines that went fast. Shopping. Lawsuits blaming other for whatever went wrong. What did they believe in? Conspiracy theories. Racial superiority. Heroes with superpowers. Faith healers. God-loves-you religions. State-supported lotteries. All that enormous energy expended to conquer nothing at all, stadia full of people watching no conquering going on. For every scientist or person in government who really tried to conquer, there were a thousand people buying lottery tickets, drinking beer, watching football, and growing old.",
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      "slug": "life-arises-naturally",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/life-arises-naturally",
      "text": "Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts…",
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      "slug": "arnole-had-time",
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      "text": "Arnole had time for analysis.\n\n“It is interesting,” he said to himself, “that this small god implied devils were made of ignorance, for I have always believed this to be true. Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does. Men write false documents, they preach false doctrine, and those beliefs survive to inspire wickedness in later generations. They are like the spells woven by wizards, lying in wait for the credulous to find them and uses them. Conversely, some men write and teach the truth, only to be declared heretic by the wicked. In such cases, evil has the advantage, for it will do anything to suppress truth, but the good man limits what he will do to suppress falsehood.\n\n“One might almost make a rule of it: “Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic.”",
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      "slug": "even-when-you",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-visitor/even-when-you",
      "text": "“Even when you went to the moon, you didn’t go in search of truth. Oh, you said it was to learn about the universe, but you really went because you were playing a dominance game with another country. Once the other side no longer played the game, you only pretended to go on while actually you started the long slide back into magic and miracles.”\n\nNell said angrily, “Miracles are religion!”\n\n”It doesn’t matter what name you call it,” said the small god. “Magic or miracle, sorcery or religion, it’s all the same.”",
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      "slug": "the-regime-says",
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      "text": "The Regime says a lot of things, nine-tenths of it lies and the other tenth wishful thinking.",
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      "text": "For the last several years, Jerry has been much moved by “spiritual” things. Though it’s a word Jerry and his friends use quite comfortably, I’ve never been able to define it. It means non-material things, certainly, but also, non-intellectual, non-measurable, non-factual things. For his friend Marie, it’s a belief in angels, but her husband thinks it’s the feeling he gets when he sits naked in a hot spring, watching the stars.",
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      "slug": "i-am-myself",
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      "text": "I am myself, though from moment to moment something else seems to be looking on. Whatever will be required of me, however, can best be done if I remember who I am.",
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      "text": "If a society thinks it needs weapons, it must accept killing. If it thinks it needs violent men, it must accept rapine and assault.",
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