Jacob

“He said he hoped a lot of us would have careers in science,' she said. She didn't see anything funny in that. She was remembering a lesson that had impressed her. She was repeating it, gropingly, dutifully. 'He said, the trouble with the world was...'

'The trouble with the world was,' she continued hesitatingly, 'that people were still superstitious instead of scientific. He said if everybody would study science more, there wouldn't be all the trouble there was.'

'He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day,' the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. 'Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they'd finally found out what it was?'

'I missed that,' I murmured.

' I saw that, said Sandra. "About two days ago.'

'That's right,' said the bartender.

'What is the secret of life?' I asked.

'I forget,' said Sandra.

'Protein,' the bartender declared. 'They found out something about protein.'

'Yeah,' said Sandra, 'that's it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.”
― Primo Levi, The Black Hole of Auschwitz