“I am born into an environment - I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to whence and whither - all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavor of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth. And as we try, we delight in it, we find it extremely interesting."  Erwin Schrödinger

“You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right – at least if you have any experience – because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in.” Richard Feynman

“An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope?” Carl Sagan

“Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.” Richard Feynman

“We live to discover beauty”

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” David Deutsch

(…) “We do understand why the world doesn’t run in reverse. There is a reason, we have a scientific explanation, and it´s called the arrow of time. We are compelled to travel into the future. And that´s because the arrow of time dictates that as each moment passes, things change. And once these changes have happened, they are never undone. 

Permanent change is fundamental part of what it means to be human. You know, we all age as the years pass by. People are born, they live and they die. I suppose it´s part of the joy and tragedy of our lives. But out there in the universe, those grand and epic cycles appear eternal and unchanging, but that´s an illusion. See, in the life of the universe, just as in our lives, everything is irreversibly changing." Professor Brian Cox

“Open your mind, it’s beautiful inside.”

“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simples reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.” Charles Darwin

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Carl Sagan

“Imagine all the people living live in peace.” John Lennon