Ann Druyan
For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature.Collection: History
A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.
All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.
Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science.
I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.
I've been thinking about the distorted view of science that prevails in our culture. I've been wondering about this, because our civilization is completely dependent on science and high technology, yet most of us are alienated from science.
In 1974, I first met Carl. I was 25 years old. I am 51 now.
My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.
People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that's completely opposite of the truth.
This planet seems to be in such sorry shape. And I can't ever think about the rest of the universe without coming back home and thinking what the implications for life here would be if we were to really have some definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.
Well, I actually grew up in the sixties. I feel very lucky, actually, that that was my slice of time that I was dealt. Let's remember that the real motivation in the sixties, and even in the fifties, was the Cold War.
I don't have any faith, but I have a lot of hope, and I have a lot of dreams of what we could do with our intelligence if we had the will and the leadership and the understanding of how we could take all of our intelligence and our resources and create a world for our kids that is hopeful.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Powerful
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.Collection: Couple
And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?Collection: Might
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.Collection: Sacred
It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life's preciousness on our tiny planet.Collection: Uplifting
Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know.Collection: Fear
Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn't understand it, and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that's one of the infinite number of things I learned from him.Collection: Numbers
The Universe revealed by science is one of far more awesome grandeur than any religion has ever posited.Collection: Grandeur
We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go.Collection: Planets
The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences.Collection: Law
I remember that one time Carl Sagan was giving a talk, and he spelled out, in a kind of withering succession, these great theories of demotion that science has dealt us, all of the ways in which science is telling us we are not who we would like to believe we are. At the end of it, a young man came up to him and he said: "What do you give us in return? Now that you've taken everything from us? What meaning is left, if everything that I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, Do something meaningful.Collection: Meaningful
We are living in a society that is totally dependent on science and high technology, and yet most of us are effectively alienated and excluded from its workings, from the values of science, the methods of science, and the language of science. A good place to start would be for as many of us as possible to begin to understand the decision-making and the basis for those decisions, and to act independently and not be manipulated into thinking one thing or another, but to learn how to think. That's what science does.Collection: Technology
Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife. For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better. Even at this moment when anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was unflinching. As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our wondrous life together was ending forever.Collection: Taken
The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate.Collection: Wise
Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?" Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.Collection: Believe
Science has the cold facts, but lacks religion's social organization and ability to inspire that moves people to act.Collection: Moving
I believe that we are a story-driven species and that we understand how things are put together, in the context of narrative. It's a shame that science hasn't been taught that way, in a long time. It's usually the fact completely devoid of any human experience or any idea of how the scientist came to that conclusion.Collection: Believe
Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything.Collection: Science
The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.Collection: Death
We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.Collection: Loneliness
The only gratification that science denies to us is deception.Collection: Deception
Knowing a deep thing well, which is what science asks of its practitioners, is an empowerment that is very profound. It's a liberation.Collection: Knowing
We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.Collection: Wine
As a species, we tend to lie quite a bit - to ourselves and to each other. It's a primate thing. So, a reason to go into a career in science and technology, or to learn more about these subjects, is to become a more powerful person.Collection: Powerful
People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say thats completely opposite of the truth.Collection: Giving Up
If you have a beating heart, that's good enough.Collection: Heart
In the 1970s, I think that there was probably a higher degree of respect for science, of hope about the future, and the future-oriented vision.Collection: Thinking
I found that it was easiest to convey the information in the context of the life of the scientist or in the context of our own personal experience, and there was no idea that was too complicated that couldn't be explained clearly and directly.Collection: Ideas
No single step in the persuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was.Collection: Enlightenment