#it

For thousands of years humans were oppressed— as some of us still are— by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea.* Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#greece #ionia #knowledge #learning #reality

In every letter, in every line, she saw him. He hadn't changed - he'd only grown into the man he'd meant to be. ↗

— Diana Peterfreund

#love #romance #change

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar. ↗

— Brad Leithauser

#astronomy #chile #metaphor #novelists #telescope

Say as little as possible, hope some of the undecideds like your teeth better than the other guy’s—that’s usually the way this business works. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#politics #business

[Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#colonialism #enterprise #foreign-aid #international-politics #international-relations

His death took place on the same day, at the same time of the same month as Katie’s: Monday 12th November at 4am in the morning, on her tenth year anniversary. The old radio suddenly came live and the song Immortality by Celine Dion played. Emma proved you can love the man and hate the disease. She was relieved Ronan’s suffering had ended and that he had gone before her as he was so ill ↗

— Annette J. Dunlea

#annette-j-dunlea #irish-writer #death

Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here. ↗

— Donald Trump

#donald-trump #inspiration #motivation #positive-thinking #positivity

I can't help but smile as I swipe a lone tear trailing down my cheek. How can I not be crazy in love with this guy? Time away from him didn't change anything. I can't deny him another chance. That would be denying myself. ↗

— Simone Elkeles

#change

She was right about something else too," Dimitri said after a long pause. My back was to him, but there was a strange quality to his voice that made me turn around. "What's that?" I asked. "That I do still love you." With that one sentence, everything in the universe changed. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#dimitri #hathaway #love #rose #change

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. ↗

— Mark Twain

#change