A Quote by Floyd Skloot

Eliza Factor's first novel, 'The Mercury Fountain,' explores what happens when a life driven by ideology confronts implacable truths of science and human nature. It also shows how leaders can inflict damage by neglecting the real needs of real people.

Floyd Skloot

Quote Topics

Also Damage Driven Factor First Fountain Happens How Human Human Nature Ideology Inflict Leaders Life Mercury Nature Needs Novel People Real Real People Science Shows Truths

Quote Author

Floyd Skloot
American - Novelist
Born: July 6, 1947

Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.

Bertrand Russell

'Watchmen' is a politically charged story, and it explores exactly what a hero is, how the world would treat them and how they would react. It was the first time I read a superhero story that explored that situation. These are very real people with very real problems.

Gerard Way

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. But it is not science alone that has guided me. I have also been helped by a renewed study of the classical philosophical arguments.

Antony Flew

Very few people realize the damage even one mercury vapor light can inflict on birds, air quality and human sleep patterns. It a serious problem that is rapidly growing and it will take all of us to take action before we see results.

Will Young

You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.

Julian Barnes

Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.

Allen W. Wood

I realize I have a lot of amazing opportunities, but I don't know how you can play a human being going through real human experiences without being able to walk down the street. If you can't live a real life, how do you play a real person? It always confuses me when actors work back-to-back-to-back with no break. If you live your life on a film set, how the hell can you relate to real people? You don't know what its like to not have people fussing over you all day, and that's not life - that's silly movies. I will always want to take breaks and I wouldn't be OK with losing that.

Emma Stone

The best learning happens in real life with real problems and real people and not in classrooms.

Charles Handy

The science-denial machinery is a serious adversary, and it has a big advantage over real science: it does not need to win its dispute with real science; it just needs to create a public illusion that there is a dispute.

Sheldon Whitehouse

I meet people in my business who have this extraordinary ability to understand human nature in their work, but in real life, they don't seem to have the first clue.

Joseph Fiennes

Eliza was my first name for two reasons. My dad was reading 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' which features the maid Eliza in it, when I was born. Then there was Eliza Doolittle from 'My Fair Lady' and 'Pygmalion.' My mum always loved the name, and I got called Eliza Doolittle a lot, so it stuck, basically.

Eliza Doolittle

I think a lot of people are getting bored of audition-based shows, along the lines of 'Strictly Come Dancing' or 'The X-Factor'. I know I am. But 'Dragons' Den' will have a longer shelf-life than all of them because it's fundamentally real in a way that other shows aren't.

Peter Jones

My job is to portray real human beings and real human experiences, and if I haven't had a real human experience myself outside of the film industry, how am I going to be able to do that?

Emily Browning

Disturbing and intriguing. The Synchronicity Factor is much more than a page-turning thriller, for its remarkable plot is rooted in real science and real history.

Peter Lovesey

I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.