excerpt from Feynman's speech to the National Academy of Sciences, 1955

-
For instance, I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think:

There are the rushing waves mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.

For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest, tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.

A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.

They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity,
living things,masses of atoms,
DNA, protein,
dancing a pattern ever more intricate,
out of the cradle,
onto dry land,
here It is standing:

atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering:

I,
a universe of atoms,
an atom in the universe.