The Nature of Things

"When human life lay groveling on the ground, crushed by superstition glaring menacingly down from the sky, a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, to stand erect and challenge. Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor lightening's flash nor thunder's growl. Instead they gave him courage to smash the locks on nature's door. His mind ventured far out beyond the flaming ramparts of the world, voyaging through the infinite heavens. Returning victorious, he proclaimed to us what can and cannot be, and the limits to the powers of nature. Now it is superstition that lies crushed beneath his feet; and we, by his triumph, are lifted equal with the sky."

- T. Lucretius Carus, "de rerum natura" 55 BCE