#wonder

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#reason #science #science-vs-religion #scientific-method #sense-of-wonder

For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe. It had been the icecaps, the deserts, the volcanoes and the glaciers that had given us a sense of finitude and limitation and had elicited a feeling in which fear and respect coagulated into a strangely pleasing feeling of humility, a feeling which the philosophers of the eighteenth century had famously termed the sublime. But then had come a transformation to which we were still the heirs.... Over the course of the nineteenth century, the dominant catalyst for that feeling of the sublime had ceased to be nature. We were now deep in the era of the technological sublime, when awe could most powerfully be invoked not by forests or icebergs but by supercomputers, rockets and particle accelerators. We were now almost exclusively amazed by ourselves. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#humility #nature #sublime #technology #wonder

I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#cure #depression #fight #happiness #i

I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth. ↗

— F. Murray Abraham

#comfortable #did #having #i #interesting

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved. ↗

— Joseph Addison

#dissolved #easily #friendships #general #suddenly

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. ↗

— Isabel Allende

#although #ancient #ancient times #born #catholic

Clapton asked my brother to play on his record. I thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world. ↗

— Gregg Allman

#brother #clapton #his #i #most

No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children. ↗

— Kingsley Amis

#horrible #life #people #start #wonder

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes. ↗

— Tori Amos

#fit #into #most #ones #people

There's something honorable about holding out for love and not breaking up for the sake of the baby. I see people get divorced, and there is a part of me that thinks, I wonder how hard they tried? ↗

— Judd Apatow

#baby #breaking #breaking up #divorced #get