“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.” Jacques-Yves Cousteau
“The definition of an optimist. People not with a hopeful view of the future, but rather, people who simply believe that any problem that does not contradict the laws of physics can ultimately be solved.” David Deutsch
“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders.”
— Richard Feynman from his book The Meaning Of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-ScientistPhoto credit: Chris Burkard
“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” Richard Feynman
“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.” David Attenborough
“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.” Thomas Huxley
“Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.” Henri Poincaré
“Once destroyed, nature’s beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.” Ansel Adams
“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil’s masterpiece.” Sam Harris
“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.” Jane Goodall
“I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.” Vincent van Gogh
“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.” Richard Dawkins
“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.” Richard Feynman