“He was in that stage of love–and of liquor–where one is completely taken up with oneself, and can get along very well without the other party.”
Françoise Sagan“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]”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos“If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?”
Carl Sagan“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
Carl Sagan“Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder. But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished — perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds — on the distant planet Earth.”
Carl Sagan“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”
Carl Sagan“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”
Carl Sagan“We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.”
Carl Sagan“If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos“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.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos“My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical.”
Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution