Vastness Quotes

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

  Carl Sagan

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Kids, Science

  Psychology Today Interview, www.psychologytoday.com. January 1, 1996.

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• The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Prejudice, May

  "Wonder and Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer 19 (1), www.csicop.org. January/February 1995.

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• Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Appreciate, Lost, Strangeness

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.124, Xist Publishing

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• The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Sky, One Day

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 7: "The Backbone of Night", 1990.

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• The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.

  Max Planck

  Nature, Science, World

  Max Planck (1959). “The new science: 3 complete works: Where is science going? The universe in the light of modern physics; The philosophy of physics”

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• What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

  David Eagleman

  Ignorance, Teach

  "David Eagleman: 'We won't die - our consciousness will live forever on the internet'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2010.

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• In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.

  Carl Sagan

  Civilization, Cosmos

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• The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Light, Darkness, Meaning Of Life

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

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• What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

  Carl Sagan

  Caring, Thinking, Wind

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• Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Self, Cosmos

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.

  Emily Carr

  Facts, Spirit, Mood

  Emily Carr (2009). “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, p.24, D & M Publishers

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

  Carl Sagan

  Consciousness, Creatures, Hard

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• If you want to know who you are, look into the true mirror. The flower will reflect your beauty. The sky will reflect your vastness. The ocean will reflect your depth. The child will reflect your innocence. But if you look into the mirror that is unconscious humanity, you are looking into the wrong mirror. Your reflection will be distorted by their projections.

  Leonard Jacobson

  Children, Ocean, Flower

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• The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

  Carl Sagan

  Humility, Thinking, Compassion

  Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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• I recommend learning how to come into the presence of stillness and vastness. Learn any form of meditation. Spend twenty minutes every day if possible, in meditation, listening to the crazy monkey mind inside you, and learning how to still the thoughts and discover that big, deep soulful part of yourself.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Crazy, Meditation, Listening

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Television, Very Good

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

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• Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.

  Maria Mitchell

  Stars, Space, Trying

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• We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.

  Jaron Lanier

  Beautiful, Track, Joy

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• Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity.

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Hands, Space, Brain

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• When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Moon, Space, Floating

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• It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.

  William Golding

  Majesty, Redemption, May

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• Who among us has never looked up into the heavens on a starlit night, lost in wonder at the vastness of space and the beauty of the stars?

  Jeb Bush

  Stars, Night, Space

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• The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

  Carl Sagan

  Cosmos, Earth, Across The Universe

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.28, Ballantine Books

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• Decisive moment: the one when you will be really alone. And it is perhaps this that makes her hesitate: not the void, but the vastness of the solitude. It's as well if you are frightened of solitude. It's a sign that you have come to the moment of your birth.

  Helene Cixous

  Solitude, Void, Birth

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