“ If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ”
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
~ Carl Sagan
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
