# Exhalation - Author: [Ted Chiang](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang.md) - Quotes: 23 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation ## Quotes > Humans have lived alongside parrots for thousands of years, and only recently have they considered the possibility that we might be intelligent. > > I suppose I can’t blame them. We parrots used to think humans weren’t very bright. It’s hard to make sense of behavior that’s so different from your own. p. 233 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/humans-have-lived.md) > Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious. p. 249 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/let-me-always.md) > When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can’t have justice until you know the truth. p. 190 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/when-the-public.md) > Every form of behavior is compatible with determinism. p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/every-form-of-behavior.md) > One proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders. > > Speaking as a member of a species that has been driven nearly to extinction by humans, I can attest that this is a wise strategy. p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/one-proposed-solution.md) > Even if humanity is not the reason for which the universe was made, I still wish to understand the way it operates. We human beings may not be the answer to the question why, but I will keep looking for the answer to how. p. 269 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/even-if-humanity.md) > Before a culture adopts the use of writing, when its knowledge is transmitted exclusively through oral means, it can very easily revise its history. It’s not intentional, but it is inevitable; throughout the world, bards and griots have adapted their material to their audiences and thus gradually adjusted the past to suit the needs of the present. The idea that accounts of the past shouldn’t change is a product of literate cultures’ reverence for the written word. Anthropologists will tell you that oral cultures understand the past differently; for them, their histories don’t need to be accurate so much as they need to validate the community’s understanding of itself. So it wouldn’t be correct to say that their histories are unreliable; their histories do what they need to do. p. 226 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/before-a-culture.md) > “But I still feel like it’s my fault.” > > Dana nodded. “We like the idea that there’s always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there’s someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone’s control.” p. 299 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/but-i-still.md) > The rewards will be purely intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough? p. 87 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/the-rewards-will.md) > But the church as an institution has always been able to derive strength from the evidence when it’s useful and ignore it when it’s not. p. 264 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/but-the-church.md) > Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience. p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/every-quality-that.md) > Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same. p. 57 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/though-i-am-long.md) > My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has. p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/my-message-to-you.md) > If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible. p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/if-shes-learned.md) > Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. p. 29 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/four-things-do-not.md) > He was in no position to judge these people. So what if they felt sorry for themselves? Better to wallow in self-pity over nothing than to have actually screwed up your life. p. 297 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/he-was-in-no-position.md) > Much of modern astronomy is promised on the Copernican principle, the idea that we are not at the center of the universe and are not observing it from a privileged position; this is pretty much the opposite of young-earth creationism. p. 348 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/much-of-modern.md) > What we now call young-earth creationism used to be common sense; up until the 1600s, it was widely assumed that the world was of recent origin. But as naturalists began looking at their environment more closely, they found clues that called this assumption into question, and over the last four hundred years, those clues have multiplied and interlocked to form the most definitive rebuttal imaginable. p. 348 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/what-we-now.md) > Anyone who has wasted hours surfing the Internet knows that technology can encourage bad habits. p. 194 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/anyone-who-has.md) > Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is. Some lovers break up with each other the first time they have a big argument; some parents do as little for their children as they can get away with; some pet owners ignore their pets whenever they become inconvenient. In all of those cases the people are unwilling to make an effort. Having a real relationship, whether with a lover or a child or a pet, requires that you be willing to balance the other party’s wants and needs with your own. p. 344 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/sex-isnt-what.md) > Exponential regularly releases new versions, advertising each one as being a step closer to the consumer’s dream of AI: a butler that is utterly loyal and attentive from the moment it’s switched on. To Ana this upgrade sequence seems like a walk to the horizon, providing the illusion of progress while never actually getting any closer to the goal. p. 158 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/exponential-regularly-releases.md) > For him, the keyboard and screen are a miserable substitute for being there, as unsatisfying as a jungle video game would be to a chimpanzee taken from the Congo. p. 128 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/for-him-the.md) > “Forgive and forget” goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that was all you needed. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions isn’t so straightforward. In most cases we have to forget a little bit before we can forgive; when we no longer experienced the pain as fresh, the insult is easier to forgive, which in turn makes it less memorable, and so on. It’s this psychological feedback loop that makes initially infuriating offenses seem pardonable in the mirror of hindsight. p. 198 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ted-chiang/exhalation/forgive-and-forget.md)