Ali

“After 7 or 8 billion years of such enrichment, an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born in an undistinguished region (the Orion arm) of an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished part of the universe (the outskirts of the Virgo supercluster). The gas cloud from which the Sun formed contained a sufficient supply of heavy elements to spawn a few planets, thousands of asteroids, and billions of comets.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“However, every advance in our knowledge of the cosmos has revealed that we live on a cosmic speck of dust, orbiting a mediocre star in the far suburbs of a common sort of galaxy, among a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. The news of our cosmic unimportance triggers impressive defense mechanisms in the human psyche.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

“It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.”
― Walter Benjamin

“To some people return to religion is the answer, not as an act of faith but in order to escape an intolerable doubt; they make this decision not out of devotion but in search of security.”
― Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion