So go outside tonight. Find a dark place. Look up at the Milky Way—that great river of light, the “galactic milk” spilt across the sky. Your eyes are made of stardust. Your brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. And you are using it to read this.
Now, go. Touch the sky. It is your birthright. Cosmos - Carl Sagan -Complete Edition-
The Complete Edition is not merely an updated textbook. It is a moral treatise. Sagan, with his trademark turtleneck and twinkling eyes, asks the forbidden question: Given our insignificance, what is our obligation? So go outside tonight
Do not ask for a sign from above. You are the sign. Do not beg for a purpose. You are the purpose. The cosmos spent 13.8 billion years to make you. Don’t waste the investment. Your eyes are made of stardust
He begins not with a bang, but with a library. The Library of Alexandria. Why? Because before we can look out, we must understand the fragility of looking in. The ancients knew the Earth was round. They calculated its circumference with a stick and a well. They dreamed of atoms. And then, that library—the collective memory of the species—burned.
His answer is radical in its simplicity. The only meaning is the meaning we make. The only heaven is the one we build here, with justice, with science, with mercy.