"It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness."

"Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns."

"An organism at war with itself is doomed."

"There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths."

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

"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."

"Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze."

"There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any."

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

"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."

"The visions we offer our children shape the future."

"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."

".. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'"

"We can't help it. Life looks for life."

"The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster."

"But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble."

"You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility."

"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]"

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"

"Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works."

"When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion."

"Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe."

"The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps."

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?"

"Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used."

"Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world."

"We make our purpose."

"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?"

"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.)"

"I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship."

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

"I've always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions."

"If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go"

"Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective."

"A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone."

"It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science."

"Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship."

"And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude."

"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."

"All colours are arbitrary."

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

"A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

"By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang."

"The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines."

"Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy."

"Science is only a Latin word for knowledge"

"Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being."

"There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy."

"You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years," he said. "Think of it more as... ..cultivated."