This is from a book I just finished by Mary Roach. It was her last paragraph, and boy, what a paragraph is was - I've separated it out in easy-to-digest bites:
"The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in. War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism.
I see a backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying "I bet we can do this."
Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars.
Let's go out and play."
