This planet seems to be in such sorry shape. And I can't ever think about the rest of the universe without coming back home and thinking what the implications for life here would be if we were to really have some definitive proof of extraterrestrial life.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life's preciousness on our tiny planet.