Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.
Interviewer: Didn’t Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn’t want to believe. he wanted to know.
And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?
It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can’t give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.
If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.