“Soil is not unalive. It is a mixture of broken rock, pollen, fungal filaments, ciliate cysts, bacterial spores, nematodes and other microscopic animals and their parts. 'Nature,' Aristotle observed, 'proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation.”

— Lynn Margulis

Independence is a political, not a scientific, term.
What is Life? (1995)

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Lynn Margulis 24

American evolutionary biologist 1938–2011

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“Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things”

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American aviation pioneer and author

Poetry written around the time of the breaking of her "tenuous engagement" to Samuel Chapman (c. 1928), published in Amelia, My Courageous Sister : Biography of Amelia Earhart (1987) by Muriel Earhart Morrissey and Carol L. Osborne, p. 74; also in Amelia : A Life of the Aviation Legend (1999) by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, p. 38
Context: Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.