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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• This is the time. This is the place. This is the vastness. Right here is paradise. Always. Always.

  Byron Katie

  Spiritual, Paradise, Spirituality

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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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• Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it.

  Toni Packer

  Life, Movement, Zen Buddhism

  Toni Packer (2007). “The Light of Discovery”, p.14, Shambhala Publications

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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

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series (Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory), 1990.

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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

  "Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, 1980.

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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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• 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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• The auditory perception is not sufficient for our knowledge of the world; it does not have vastness.

  Robert Delaunay

  Perception, Doe, World

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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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• 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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• 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.

  Carl Sagan

  Lonely, Dark, 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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• In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

  Carl Sagan

  Time, Space, Joy

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.162, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Men, Two

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.114

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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