Geoff

“Malcolm Muggeridge captured this parting of the ways in a gloomy piece for Encounter: ‘Each time I return to England from abroad,’ he observed, ‘the country seems a little more run-down than when I went away; its streets a little shabbier, its railway carriages and restaurants a little dingier; the editorial pretensions of its newspapers a little emptier, and the vainglorious rhetoric of its politicians a little more fatuous.’29”
― Philip Stephens, Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit

“I'd like to widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead--for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.”
― Martin Rees

“There’s an all-too-common assumption that “non-religious” means “not adhering to the tenets of a specific religious sect.” If you aren’t talking about Jesus, or Allah, or reincarnation — if all you’re talking about is non-specific ideas of some sort of higher power or some sort of afterlife — that’s typically seen to be “non-religious.” Atheism — or indeed, any sort of non-belief in supernatural beings or forces — is still so invisible in our culture that the possibility simply isn’t considered. So even supposedly inclusive, secular events end up with religious or spiritual content that leaves non-believers out in the cold.”
― Greta Christina, Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God

“She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace