#scienc

Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days. ↗

— J.E. Gordon

#inspirational #science #courage

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Theophrastus was right. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#knowledge #learning #mystery #nature #pretense

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn't about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#death

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.) ↗

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

#science #wars #death

He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern. ↗

— Neal Stephenson

#science-fiction #sf #death

Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#learning #science #death

Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death. ↗

— Santosh Kalwar

#inspirational #life #poetry #religion #science

Being alone does not make you crazy, it reminds you of who you are. ↗

— E.J. Koh

#death #fantasy #love #philosophy #red

We never care for anyone for their own sake. We train them for the system. No one matters for their own sake. No one acts for their own sake. The system will always be bigger than you. ↗

— E.J. Koh

#death #fantasy #love #red #science-fiction

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#immortality #science #death