John Noble Wilford quotes

Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to its shimmering red presence in the clear night sky. It is like a glowing ember in a field of ethereal lights, projecting energy and promise. It inspires visions of an approachable world. The mind vaults to thoughts of what might have been (if Mars were a litter closer to the warming Sun) and of what could be (if humans were one day to plant colonies there).
-- John Noble Wilford

#Eye #Night #Light

Alone among all creatures, the species that styles itself wise, Homo sapiens, has an abiding interest in its distant origins, knows that its allotted time is short, worries about the future and wonders about the past.
-- John Noble Wilford

#Wise #Past #Worry

The American civil space program is growing to maturity. It has passed through the joys and crises of precocious childhood and now is being called upon to do grown-up things, like earn a living and establish permanent roots in space.
-- John Noble Wilford

#Maturity #Roots #Space

And when you, O human, will return to Nature, that day your eyes will open, you will stare straight into the eyes of Nature and in its mirror you will see your image. You will knowthat when you hid from Nature, you hid from yourselfWe who have been turned away from Nature - if we desire life, we must establish a new relationship with Nature.

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.

Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights.

You can look at the words on this paper and, because they are the ones I am used to choosing, they will show you the shape of me. I am here to be read in the way you might read the impression of my weight in a bed after a still night, a restless night, a night not alone.

I'm nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.

Last night I'd made love to a woman for the first and last time. It had been amazing and I had a memory that would shape the rest of my life.

We must enhance the light, not fight the darkness.

You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.