Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence. Olaf Stapledon
About This Quote

When we look at the world around us, we can make up any story we want. What may seem to be a rock might actually be a mountain range or a city. So, when we look at ourselves, we can make up our own story. We can make up stories of who we are and what our purpose in life is.

However, none of these stories are real. Man’s science is a mere mist of numbers and his philosophy is a fog of words.

Source: Star Maker

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