The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe.

History has been the history of warfare.

The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations.

In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.

The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.