Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
—Carl Sagan
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
—George Wald
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
—Carl Sagan
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
—Blaise Pascal
How many people have gotten older and forgotten about the things they hoped for and dreamed about when they were young? Or given up without ever taking a chance, or settled in life because it’s easier, or they’re scared, or whatever other excuses? How many people need a reminder of who they once were?
—Jessi Kirby in Golden
Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.
—Edward Teller
If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
—John A. Wheeler
Children are all foreigners.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not believe in God, but I have a sense of the infinite.
—Robert Desnos
For monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a raccoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception.
—Terence McKenna
And who shall say—whatever disenchantment follows—that we ever forget magic, or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple tree, the singing, and the gold?
—Thomas Wolfe
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
—Andre Malraux