It is on this world that we developed our passion for exploring the Cosmos, and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working … - Carl Sagan

and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny.

I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said “billion” many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said “billions and billions.” For one thing, it's too imprecise. How many billions are “billions and billions”? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? “Billions and billions” is pretty vague...For a while, out of childish pique, I wouldn't utter the phrase, even when asked to. But I've gotten over that. So, for the record, here goes:
“Billions and billions.”

The unprecedented powers that science now makes available must be accompanied by unprecedented levels of ethical focus and concern by the scientific community — as well as the sort broadly based public education into the importance of science and democracy.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.