Just a beautiful book. Sagan's writing remains powerful, clear, wonder-full, and inspiring. This book captures both the successes & failures, the gifts and dangers of our species. Reading it is wonderful, but it will make you sad because you will never get to read it for the first time again.

• matthewcgood
• August 17, 2009
• Pale Blue Dot
• Reply

"The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star."

• matthewcgood
• August 17, 2009
• Pale Blue Dot
• Page 398
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In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.

• matthewcgood
• February 16, 2009
• Pale Blue Dot
• Page 52
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