Aya

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“But the many are there. You've got to do something about them."
"You've got to do something about them," Mr. Propter agreed. "But at the same time, there are circumstances in which you can't do anything. You can't do anything effective about any one if he doesn't choose or isn't able to collaborate with you in doing the right thing. For example, you've got to help people who are being killed off by malaria. But in practice you can't help them if they refuse to screen their windows and insist on taking walks near stagnant water in the twilight. It's exactly the same with the diseases of the body politic You've got to help people if they're under the menace of sudden revolution or slow degeneration. You've got to help. But the fact remains, nevertheless, that you can't help if they persist in the course of behaviour which originally got them into their trouble. For example, you can't preserve people from the horrors of war if they won't give up the pleasures of nationalism. You can't save them from slumps and depressions so long as they go on thinking exclusively in terms of money and regarding and regarding money as the supreme good. You can't avert revolution and enslavement if they will identify progress with the increase of centralization and prosperity with the intensifying of mass production. You can't preserve them from their collective madness and suicide if they persist in paying divine honours to ideals which are merely projections of their own personalities - in other words, if they insist on worshiping themselves...”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham’s Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark