Sagan

“But why should we have to be useful and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“The swimmer and the shark whose life he has saved find themselves face to face. They look into each other’s eyes for several minutes, and each is amazed to find such fierceness in the gaze of the other. They swim in a circle, not losing sight of each other, and they both say to themselves: ‘I was wrong until now; here is one more wicked than I.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’ said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Because the truth is, anyone who is someone first started out as a delusional dreamer.”
― Julia Fox, Down the Drain