The Fifth Miracle Quotes

“Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.”
― Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

“The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating.”
― Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

“The stardust in your eyes If atom stocks are inexhaustible, Greater than power of living things to count, If Nature’s same creative power were present too To throw the atoms into unions—exactly as united now, Why then confess you must That other worlds exist in other regions of the sky, And different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts.”
― Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life