Ann Druyan Quotes

Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.

A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.

If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.

And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?

Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know.

We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?" Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.

Science is nothing more than a neverending search for the truth.

Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science.

My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.

People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say thats completely opposite of the truth.

We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go.

The only gratification that science denies to us is deception.

Science has the cold facts, but lacks religion's social organization and ability to inspire that moves people to act.

The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences.

All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.

The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.

Knowing a deep thing well, which is what science asks of its practitioners, is an empowerment that is very profound. It's a liberation.

The Universe revealed by science is one of far more awesome grandeur than any religion has ever posited.

If you have a beating heart, that's good enough.

In the 1970s, I think that there was probably a higher degree of respect for science, of hope about the future, and the future-oriented vision.

No single step in the persuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was.

Our stars are not where we last admired them. Our homes crumble and we don't know which place to long for.

I'm just at the age when time speeds up in an odd way. Do you know what I mean? The winters come closer together and you learn to accept that you're not special anymore.