Deeper and deeper. Ever greater power. Ever greater evil. - Michael Shea

The assumption that we would ever be called upon to perform this second task now appeared quite clearly to me as the most extravagant folly, based on a wild delusion conceived by a raving idiot.

I have in mind the notion that is so fashionable nowadays, namely that we live in a Dark Age where puny Science quails before many a dim Unknown on every hand. Surely this sort of facile pessimism dampens the energy of inquiry even as it leads to obscurantism—toward a despair of certainty which encourages us to embrace truths, half-truths, and the most extravagant falsehoods with a promiscuous lack of discrimination.

While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it.