A Noble and Enlightened Way to Spend our Short Time

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (2000-04-05)

• science
• understanding
• vision