3 Carl Sagan Wisdoms To Help You Feel Better About Life

Everyone I know who read “Cosmos” remembers the first time they read it. It is a mind- and spirit-altering piece of art. It made you feel both small and irreplaceable in the vastness of space. Special, momentary, proud. Carl Sagan taught me how to be inclusive of all opinions, no matter how outlandish and bizarre. He taught me there will always be an infinite amount to learn but that we have a finite time to learn it.

That was when I was a kid. As an adult, Carl Sagan, even after being gone twenty-four years, has been one of the few people capable of making me feel better about the world we live in, no matter how grim things get. I offer you these wisdoms to make you feel better during one of the worst years on record.

Magic is real.

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos Penguin Random House LLC. (1980)

Togetherness

“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

Sagan, Carl. Contact Simon & Schuster (1985)

Be kind to each other

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Existence in Space, 1994

We can be great

“For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Existence in Space, 1994

Carl Sagan believed we could be great, that we could do great things as a community since we are all one community; a community of Earth. I doubt it often but when I am reminded of his determination to always seek more and to look back on all that we have achieved, it gives me hope.