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6951fe4
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The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
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stars
cosmos
sense-of-wonder
dna
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Carl Sagan |
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90fa8a0
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"When my died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with . But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as
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true-love
love
ann-druyan
cosmos
sagan
carl-sagan
belief
atheism
superstition
|
Ann Druyan |
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db0b006
|
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
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universe
beauty
science
philosophy
cosmos
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Carl Sagan |
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ca28a8d
|
The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
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universe
life
cosmos
mystery
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Carl Sagan |
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cceb7d2
|
We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.
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universe
life
inspirational
cosmos
consciousness
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Brian Cox |
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ac1a0b8
|
The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.
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hindu
vedantism
vedas
cosmos
cosmology
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Carl Sagan |
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9454bbb
|
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose.
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r-j-anderson
ultraviolet
inspirational
cosmos
purpose
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R.J. Anderson |
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0c03caa
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I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
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cosmos
carl-sagan
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Carl Sagan |
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1e57939
|
I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.
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existence
science
cosmos
cosmology
informed
knowledge
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Carl Sagan |
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8ecc2a2
|
Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos.
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story
personality
identity
cosmos
chaos
stories
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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1ba8ec3
|
Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.
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universe
science
cosmos
nasa
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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257ebe1
|
But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential.
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faith
life
cosmos
peace-of-mind
chaos
peace
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Madeleine L'Engle |
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49ccad1
|
Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation.
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universe
science
cosmos
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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015e77d
|
The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.
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science
cosmos
space
|
Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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13ec223
|
"We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic."
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slavery
magic
human
religion
dreams
ancient-history
cognitive-dissonance
anunnaki
cosmos
occult
virus
shamanism
aliens
cause-and-effect
manipulation
sorcery
sorcerer
matrix
chaos
problems
beliefs
predator
important
service
secrets
food
mind-control
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Carlos Castaneda |
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b085eea
|
I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard--explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species.
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universe
science
cosmos
space
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Neil deGrasse Tyson |
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18555b7
|
Our ancestors said to their mother Earth: 'We are yours'. Modern Humanity said to Nature, 'You are mine'. The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole earth so that through his mouth we may say to the universe: 'We are one'.
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universe
earth
nature
humanity
green-man
mother-earth
cosmos
|
Sharon Brubaker |
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c5009d6
|
Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. ... And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe--its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It's a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it.
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nature
life
viriditas
cosmos
patterns
|
Kim Stanley Robinson |