Meanwhile the Cosmos is rich beyond measure: the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of t… - Carl Sagan

We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which
nobody understands anything about science and technology, and
this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is
going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and
technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about
it? Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. If
we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell
us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re
up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious leader who
comes ambling along. It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on.
It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they have to
practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don’t run
the government, the government runs us. — Carl Sagan

From this distant vantage point, the meat planet might not seem of any particular interest: an obscure and solitary lump, suspended in a sunbeam.

Huygens was, of course, a citizen of his time. Who of us is not? He claimed science as his religion and then argued that the planets must be inhabited because otherwise God had made worlds for nothing.