Tonka

“These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Live when you live! Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one's life! If one does not live in the right time, then one can never die at the right time.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Mi smo ovdašnje utjelovljenje jednog kozmosa koji je izrastao do samosvijesti. Počeli smo razmišljati o našem porijeklu: zvjezdana tvar koja razmišlja o zvijezdama; organizirani skupovi od deset milijardi milijarda atoma koji razmišljaju o evoluciji atoma slijedeći u mislima dugi put na kraju kojeg je, barem ovdje, niknula svijest. Naša je odanost upućena ljudskoj vrsti i planetu. Mi govorimo u ime Zemlje. Obavezu da preživimo ne dugujemo samo sebi samima već i tom kozmosu, prostranom i golemom iz kojeg smo ponikli.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Some 3.6 million years ago, in what is now northern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found in that ash footprints - the footprints, she believes, of an early hominid, perhaps an ancestor of all the people on the Earth today. And 380,000 kilometers away, in a flat dry plain that humans have in a moment of optimism called the Sea of Tranquility, there is another footprint, left by the first human to walk another world. We have come far in 3.6 million years, and in 4.6 billion and in 15 billion.

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”
― Carl Sagan