Ann Druyan Quotes

It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can’t give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.

We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.

The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate.

Science has the cold facts, but lacks religion’s social organization and ability to inspire that moves people to act.

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It’s so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

I found that it was easiest to convey the information in the context of the life of the scientist or in the context of our own personal experience, and there was no idea that was too complicated that couldn’t be explained clearly and directly.

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

As a species, we tend to lie quite a bit – to ourselves and to each other. It’s a primate thing. So, a reason to go into a career in science and technology, or to learn more about these subjects, is to become a more powerful person.

My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together.

Science is nothing more than a neverending search for the truth.

We are living in a society that is totally dependent on science and high technology, and yet most of us are effectively alienated and excluded from its workings, from the values of science, the methods of science, and the language of science. A good place to start would be for as many of us as possible to begin to understand the decision-making and the basis for those decisions, and to act independently and not be manipulated into thinking one thing or another, but to learn how to think. That’s what science does.

The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences.