“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds--all over the place, just round the corner--like that?” “Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do to teach them at these schools.”  --C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe 

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space that I occupy, and even that which I see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and am amazed that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then."  --Blaise Pascal

"A lot of people read, not enough people re-read. Don’t just read books, re-read books. There’s a great line the Stoics loved — that we never step in the same river twice. The books don’t change, but you do."  --Ryan Holiday, 26 Rules to Be a Better Thinker in 2026

https://ryanholiday.medium.com/26-rules-to-be-a-better-thinker-in-2026-6393399aad3d

“Things do not ‘happen.’ Things are made to happen.”  --John F. Kennedy

"Deformity is commonly hideous in its effects. It corrodes character, leading to deceit, treachery, malignity and false living; and as often as not vitiates those entangled in the sufferer’s life as much as the sufferer himself."  --Ashley Montagu

"One doesn't work for effects, and one doesn't set up in the artist business. One studies and learns and works and thinks to develop oneself as an intelligent, sensitive, and aware human being: and out of the always-increasing resources of intelligence, sensitivity, and awareness, the human being makes music."  --Leonard Bernstein

"When, years ago, I puzzled over the strange research for my book American Cosmic, I came to a recognition that Nietzsche had predicted a new form of something other than secular, Darwinian evolution. To open my book, I quoted Nietzsche’s proverbial question, posed in The Antichrist, to frame the issue: “Two thousand years have come and gone, and not a single new god!” I thought that the answer to Nietzsche’s question/observation was best stated by David Bowie’s statement, “The Internet is an alien life form.” Therefore, this new religion or order posited humanity as technologically transformed by non-human intelligence."  --D. W. Pasulka "2001: A Space Odyssey, Nietzsche, and the Nuclear Weapons-UFO Connection, Part Two of a Series."

https://dwpasulka.substack.com/p/2001-a-space-odyssey-nietzsche-and