Human Endeavor Quotes

“The more stories I study, the more I begin to suspect that there is only one story, and that we are, all of us, engaged in telling it.”
― J. Aleksandr Wootton, Her Unwelcome Inheritance

“Oceans recede and coastlines wither and crack. Nations lapse; others soon swagger in their places. Mountains crumble to dust, rains vanish into the sea, winds return whence they came, and every city men build has but a jumble of bones for its foundation. What is your need to me? I am the Watcher in the Dark.”
― J. Aleksandr Wootton, The Eighth Square

“We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context—in the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teach it as an intellectual pursuit rather than as a body of tricks.”
― Isidor Isaac Rabi

“What are humanity’s great dreams? To conquer the world? To split the atom? When Alexander spread his empire from the Mediterranean to India, we say he conquered the world, but he barely touched a quarter of it. We lie. We lie again when we say we split the atom. ‘Atom’ was supposed to be the smallest piece of matter—all we did is give that name to something we can split, knowing that there are quarks and tensors, other pieces smaller that we cannot touch, and only these deserve the title ‘atom.’ Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done. Alexander conquered Earth, we tell ourselves, Rutherford split the atom, no need to try again. Lies.”
― Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning