Aaron Adamson

“One question was, who gets to speak? Who has the authority to make statements about the ultimate nature of reality? This was what your Church objected to - that you asserted that you had the right to make statements about fundamental things. This was what you were saying, under all your details, which as often as not were wrong, or at least unsupported - that you had a right to your own opinion about reality, and that you had the right to say it in public, and argue for it against the views of theocrats.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream

“The good that [Galileo] fought for is not so easy to express. But put it this way: he believed in reality. He believed in paying attention to it, and in learning what he could of it, and then saying what he had learned, even insisting on it. Then in trying to apply that knowledge to make things better, if he could. Put it this way: he believed in science.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream

“The Earth is 4.54 billion years old. A span of time that big is too mind-boggling to comprehend, so let’s collapse the planet’s entire history into a single calendar year.1 Right now, as you’re reading this page, it is 31st December, just before the stroke of midnight. (Thankfully, fireworks were invented nine seconds ago.) Humans have only existed for the 30 minutes or fewer.”
― Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

“God makes the world using mathematics, and He has given us minds that can see it. We can discover the laws He used! It is a most beautiful thing to witness and understand. It's prayer. It's more than prayer, it's a sacrament, a kind of communion. An apprehension - an epiphany - it's seeing God, while still in this body and in this world! How blessed we are, to be able to experience God like that. Who would not devote their time to understanding more, to seeing deeper into God's manner of thinking about these things?”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream