I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.
She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, there’s a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more ‘numinous’ than the Ressurection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don’t they?
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.
When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.
[Dedication to Sagan’s wife, Ann Druyan, in Cosmos]
If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
The fossil record implies trial and error, the inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with a Great Designer (though not a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament.)