Ann Druyan

“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.”

“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.”

“Even if it's very late at night. Someone's always awake in the world. But of all those things you could think up for people to be doing, I think going hungry would have to be your safest bet. Going hungry, pushing each other around, leaving bombs, breaking promises, leaving nothing. It happens far away all the time. But sometimes near. We're almost two kinds of people. Some of us see it on the evening news or read about it in the morning paper. And some of us get hurt. But, you know we all get hurt. Because even if you live in a very nice house like I do, sooner or later the lies and the fires have got to burn you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”

“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.”

“Our stars are not where we last admired them. Our homes crumble and we don't know which place to long for.”

“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.”

“Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our actual place in the fabric of nature. We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go. That we even do science is a hopeful glimmer of mental health. However, it's not enough merely to accept these insights intellectually while we cling to a spiritual ideology that is not only rootless in nature but also, in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In 1974, I first met Carl. I was 25 years old. I am 51 now.”

“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.”

“As I looked out at the glittering waters of the Pacific I was seeing for Carl. He knew that it's not for any one generation to see the completed picture. That's the point. The picture is never completed. There is always so much more that remains to be discovered.”

“All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.”