If we’re going to be blind, let’s both be blind. If we’re going to be deaf, let’s both be deaf. - Liu Cixin

If the entire history of the Earth were condensed into a single day, one hour would equate to 200 million years, one minute to 3.3 million years and one second to 55,000 years. Life would appear as early as eight or nine o'clock in the morning, but human civilisation would not emerge
until the last tenth of the last second of the day. From the morning that philosophers held the first ever debate on the steps of a temple in Ancient Greece... from the day slaves laid the first foundation stone of the Great Pyramid…… from the minute that Confucius welcomed his first disciple into the candlelit gloom of his thatched hut... right up until the moment you turned the first page of this book, only one tenth of the tick of the clock would have elapsed.

Earth’s suitability for human life was no coincidence, much less an effect of the anthropic principle, but rather was an outcome of the long-term interaction between the biosphere and the natural environment,

My dad said that people who are sensitive to beauty are good by nature, and if they’re not good, then they can’t appreciate beauty.