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Title: The Dark Forest Authors: Cixin Liu Category:supplementals Number of Highlights: 31 Date: 2025-09-01 Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.
Tags:duty,perception,work
âFirst: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.â
Tags:civilization
To derive a basic picture of cosmic sociology from these two axioms, you need two other important concepts: chains of suspicion, and the technological explosion.â
Time is the one thing that canât be stopped. Like a sharp blade, it silently cuts through hard and soft, constantly advancing. Nothing is capable of jolting it even the slightest bit, but it changes everything.
Tags:stoic
First, survival is the primary need of civilization. Second, civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.â
Tags:civilization,survival
For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. Itâs as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didnât need a template.â
Tags:motivation
Life needed smoothness, but it also needed direction. One could not always be returning to the point of origin.
Tags:direction
One thing in particular that struck him was the total absence of landscapes, the mark of a mature aesthetic sensibility: hanging landscape paintings in a house situated in the Garden of Eden would be as pointless as pouring a bucket of water into the ocean.
The universe had once been bright, too. For a short time after the big bang, all matter existed in the form of light, and only after the universe turned to burnt ash did heavier elements precipitate out of the darkness and form planets and life. Darkness was the mother of life and of civilization.
Tags:favorite,perspective,space
Donât dismiss simplicity. Simple means solid. The entire mansion of mathematics was erected on a foundation of this kind of irreducibly simple, yet logically rock-solid, axiom.
Tags:career,learning,perception,problem_solving
Donât say where we are! Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we donât know, the world feels unlimited.â
The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers.
âItâs a wonder to be alive. If you donât understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?â
Tags:perspective
âI wouldnât usually bother the girls I liked. I believed in what Goethe said: âIf I love you, what business is it of yours?ââ
Tags:love
âThe source of this defeatism stems primarily from the worship of technology, and the underestimation or complete dismissal of the role of human initiative and the human spirit in war.
Tags:humanity,technology,war
As the elderly passed away, the departed Golden Shore vanished into the smoke of history. The ship of human civilization floated alone in the vast ocean, surrounded on all sides by endless, sinister waves, and no one knew if there even was an opposite shore.
âI am become death, the destroyer of worlds,â Allen exclaimed. âWhat?â Rey Diaz whipped his head around, as if someone had shot him from behind. âOppenheimer said that when he watched the first nuclear explosion. I think itâs a quote from the Bhagavad Gita.â
She said, âYour approach is wrong. Youâre writing an essay rather than creating a literary figure. What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten yearsâ experience. You canât be limited to the plot of a novelâyouâve got to imagine her entire life, and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg.â
Tags:writing
One of his key points was that the advantages of a large country were only truly advantageous in low-technology eras and would ultimately be weakened by the swift pace of technological progress, which would meanwhile enhance the strategic weight of small countries.
âWeâre all soldiers, but do you know what the biggest difference between soldiers from my time and soldiers now is? You determine your actions according to possible outcomes. But for us, we must carry out our duty regardless of the outcome. This was my only chance, so I took it.â
Tags:outcome
The historical facts of the Middle Ages and the Great Ravine prove that a totalitarian system is the greatest barrier to human progress.
âIf neither communication nor silence will work once you learn of my existence, youâre left with just one option.â
Note: This is when they argue that other beings would have to destroy each other.
Tags:scifi
The world, made complex by technology, was becoming simple again, its technology hidden deeply behind the face of reality.
Tags:society,technology
The implications of the frustrated socialized technology movement are far-reaching, and people have been made aware that even in the face of the devastating Trisolar Crisis, the unity of the human race is still a distant dream.
The only constant in a world of tremendous change is the swift passage of time.
Tags:time
The layman always comes up with better names than the expert, which is why when experts name things they, too, work from an outsiderâs perspective.
Tags:name,technology
When youâve thought of everything you should, and done everything you need to, then let whatever happens happen. Thereâs nothing more anyone can do, you know? Donât psych yourselves out.â
Tags:acceptance,problem_solving
âWhen twilight fades, you can see the stars. When dawn fades, all thatâs left isâŠâ âAll thatâs left is the harsh light of reality.â
We shall call them the Wallfacers because that ancient Eastern name for meditators mirrors the unique characteristics of their work.
The fundamental axiom of economics is the human mercenary instinct. Without that assumption, the entire field would collapse. There isnât any fundamental axiom for sociology yet, but it might be even darker than economics.
âMake time for life, or life wonât make time.â