“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– George Bernard Shaw
"Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving problems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve.
An attempted solution often proves to be misguided, in that it makes things worse. Then follow further attempts at solutions – further trial and error movements.
We can see that life – even at the level of the unicellular organism – brings something completely new into the world, something that did not previously exist: problems and active attempts to solve them; assessments, values; trial and error.
It may be supposed that, under the influence of Darwin’s natural selection, it is the most active problem solvers, the seekers and the finders, the discoverers of new worlds and new forms of life, that undergo the fastest evolution."
—Karl Popper, In Search of a Better World.
"Power without wisdom is dangerous, and what our age needs is wisdom even more than knowledge. Given wisdom, the power conferred by science can give a new degree of well-being to all mankind; without wisdom, it can bring only destruction."
— Bertrand Russell
There probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.
-- Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018)