The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. Richard Dawkins
There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago. Hannes Alfvén
There has been an earth for a little more than a billion years. As for the question of the end of it I advise: Wait and see! Albert Einstein
It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man! George Gamow
Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it? Luc Besson
On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years. James A. Michener