Carl Sagan

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.”

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

“I don't want to believe. I want to know.”

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.”

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”

“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.”

“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.”

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”