Ann Druyan quotes - page 2

Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn't understand it, and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that's one of the infinite number of things I learned from him. (Ann Druyan)
The Universe revealed by science is one of far more awesome grandeur than any religion has ever posited. View quote
Ann Druyan
The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences. View quote
Ann Druyan
The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate. View quote
Ann Druyan
Science has the cold facts, but lacks religion's social organization and ability to inspire that moves people to act. View quote
Ann Druyan
Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything. View quote
Ann Druyan
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. View quote
Ann Druyan
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. View quote
Ann Druyan
The only gratification that science denies to us is deception. View quote
Ann Druyan
If you have a beating heart, that's good enough. View quote
Ann Druyan
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. (Ann Druyan)
I found that it was easiest to convey the information in the context of the life of the scientist or in the context of our own personal experience, and there was no idea that was too complicated that couldn't be explained clearly and directly. View quote
Ann Druyan
No single step in the persuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was. View quote
Ann Druyan
In that photo ("Pale Blue Dot"), the inner meaning of four centuries of astronomical research is suddenly available to all of us at a glance. It is scientific data and art equally, because it has the power to reach into our souls and alter our consciousness. It is like a great book or movie, or any major work of art. It can pierce our denial and allow us to feel something of reality-even a reality that some of us have long resisted. A world that tiny cannot possibly be the center of a cosmos of all that is, let alone the sole focus of its creator. The pale blue dot is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter-to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness. There is no running away from the inner meaning of this scientific achievement. View quote
Ann Druyan
The vastness of the universe-and love, the thing that makes the vastness bearable-is out of reach to the arrogant. View quote
Ann Druyan
These are stories that make me more optimistic about our future. Through them I have come to feel more intensely the romance of science and the wonder of being alive right now, at these particular coordinates in spacetime, less alone, more at home, here in the cosmos. View quote
Ann Druyan
Carl made me want to be the best human being I could be. View quote
Ann Druyan
The words Einstein chose to open the 1939 World's Fair echo in my brain: "If science, like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning into the consciousness of the people." View quote
Ann Druyan
The episodes range broadly and widely, but there's a through line, which is, it matters what's true. Not absolute truth. We don't get that! But these little successive approximations of reality are all we have. View quote
Ann Druyan
I've always believed that dreams are maps. You present a dream of a future that's worth working for. I wanted to inspire people. The apocalyptic visions of what's going to happen to us haven't succeeded in melting that frozen sea inside us. You can't expect a student to do the hard work--to know a subject deeply, the way it's required for an engineer, a mathematician, a scientist-if they have no faith in the future. View quote
Ann Druyan
What I would be so happy about is-I don't expect everybody to understand everything about science at the end of the season, but I want them to be curious about learning more. I want them to understand the power of science, and its tremendous liberating potential. If those things are communicated, then I feel like my work is done. (Ann Druyan)
Another thing we're doing is that "Cosmos" has a view of the future which I believe has the power to inspire. So much of what we see, and so much of what our kids and grandchildren see, is so dystopic and despairing. It's like ... our punishment for all our sins is just around the corner, and humanity doesn't have a future, except the one that's choking and dying. And in "Cosmos" we imagine the future that we can still have. View quote
Ann Druyan
we really believe that science is a birthright that belongs to every one of us. And the degree to which we're excluded from science is the degree to which we are powerless. We can't be informed decision-makers. View quote
Ann Druyan
I think Carl was always exhorting us for the sake of our children, for the sake of a democratic society, to become at least comfortable with the methods and the language of science and that way, we could be informed decision makers in our society. I just think that his legacy, both in pioneering research for extraterrestrial intelligence which-- When he began working in this field, there were only a handful of distinguished scientists who would risk taking a scientific approach to such a sexy subject. View quote
Ann Druyan
Science has nothing in common with fundamentalism or with superstition, but it has a lot in common with that desire to understand where we came from and who we are. View quote
Ann Druyan