Andras

“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in trying, we did not give it our best effort.”
― Gene Kranz, Failure is not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

“We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future success. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.”
― Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

“All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail