5
" My childhood dream came true, but now I have a new one. I dream that some of these young people, while they're out there clicking around, maybe they'll find out about this book and find a way to get their hands on it - and when they do, they'll know that even if you're a skinny kid from Long Island who's scared of heights, if you dream of walking among the stars you can do it. They'll know that finding a purpose, being dedicated to the service of others and to a calling higher than yourself, that is what's truly important in life. They'll be able to close their eyes and imagine what it's like in space, and when they open them again, they'll look up at the sun and the moon and the Milky Way and see them with the sense of awe and wonder that they deserve.
And those young boys and girls, whatever their space dream is, they'll go for it. Whatever hurdles are in their way, they'll get past them. When they fall down, they'll get back up. They'll keep going and going, working harder and harder and running faster and faster until one day, before they know it, they'll find themselves flying through the air. The hand of a giant science fiction monster will reach down and grab them by the chest and hurl them up and up and up, out to the furthest limits of the human imagination, where they'll take the next giant leap of the greatest adventure mankind has ever known. "
― Mike Massimino , Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
6
" After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move into caves for protection--not only from the big predatory cats but, as they began to lose their monkey fur, from the elements. Eventually, they started transposing their hunting fantasies onto cave walls in the form of pictures, first as an attempt at practical magic and later for the strange, unexpected pleasure they discovered in artistic creation.
Time passed. Art came off the walls and turned into ritual. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present mindless, voracious trajectory, could land those of us lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again. "
― Tom Robbins , Villa Incognito
16
" The evolutionists, piercing beneath the show of momentary stability, discovered, hidden in rudimentary organs, the discarded rubbish of the past. They detected the reptile under the lifted feathers of the bird, the lost terrestrial limbs dwindling beneath the blubber of the giant cetaceans. They saw life rushing outward from an unknown center, just as today the astronomer senses the galaxies fleeing into the infinity of darkness. As the spinning galactic clouds hurl stars and worlds across the night, so life, equally impelled by the centrifugal powers lurking in the germ cell, scatters the splintered radiance of consciousness and sends it prowling and contending through the thickets of the world. "
― Loren Eiseley , The Star Thrower
