Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space, and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith . They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
Arthur C. ClarkeRelated topics
above bear crossing faith right space truth worth others regrets nonhumanRelated quotes
My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace - it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.
Aung San Suu Kyi
The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
William James
It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world - we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
H. P. Lovecraft
Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.
H. P. Lovecraft
In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.
Edmund Burke