QOTW: Carl Sagan
Well said.
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
Quote of the Week
I can actually hear Carl Sagan’s voice as I read this quote. If you’ve never heard it, and you are able, please take a moment to listen.
“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”
— Carl Sagan in Cosmos
Sagan’s was the voice that first ignited my love of space and astronomy. My parents, my sister, and I would watch Cosmos on PBS. My father always had a telescope ready to show us what was happening in the night sky. On moonless summer nights in North Florida he would take me up on the roof of our one-story house to lie on the black roof shingles to look at the Milky Way.
After Carl Sagan came George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry. Isaac Asimov, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Then Neil deGrasse Tyson and Andy Weir. Science and fiction are all wrapped up in each other for me. They are in my marrow and my personality.
I don’t know who I would be if I hadn’t been raised by parents who encouraged me to look up at the stars. ✨
