The time will come when diligent research over long periods will
bring to light things which now lie hidden.
A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be
enough for the investigation of so vast a subject…
And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive
ages.
There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did
not know things that are so plain to them…
Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us
will have been effaced.
Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for
every age to investigate…
Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.
— Seneca, Natural Questions, Book 7, first century. From Carl Sagan’s Comos (how the book starts) [make sure to say it’s a quote from the first century AD]
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