A Quote by Carl Sagan

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

Carl Sagan

Quote Topics

Contemplating Cosmos Itself Man Matter

Quote Author

Carl Sagan
American - Scientist
November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996

We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

Carl Sagan

The Spirit could not create matter as anything different from Itself, for it had only Itself as the tissue or material with which to build the cosmos.

Paramahansa Yogananda

When a man does a household job, he goes through three periods: contemplating how it will be done; contemplating when it will be done; and contemplating.

Marcelene Cox

For what lies inside of man is the whole spiritual cosmos in condensed form. In man's inner organism we have an image of the entire cosmos.

Rudolf Steiner

The effort to lift one's self into perfect enlightenment is a profound thing. It has nothing to do with individual will. It's a refraction of the cosmos. The cosmos delights in itself.

Frederick Lenz

Each individual is a cosmos of organs, each organ is a cosmos of cells, each cell is a cosmos of infinitely small ones; and in this complex world, the well-being of the whole depends entirely on the sum of well-being enjoyed by each of the least microscopic particles of organized matter. A whole revolution is thus produced in the philosophy of life.

Peter Kropotkin

Though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.

Meher Baba

Man is simply the best chance we know of that matter has had of providing itself with information about itself.

Italo Calvino

It is better to spend one day contemplating the birth and death of all things than a hundred years never contemplating beginnings and endings.

Gautama Buddha

The history of the cosmos is the history of the struggle of becoming. When the dim flux of unformed life struggled, convulsed back and forth upon itself, and broke at last into light and dark came into existence as light, came into existence as cold shadow then every atom of the cosmos trembled with delight.

D. H. Lawrence

The token of a true cosmos is in fact a particular kind of design, referred to in the book of Genesis in the phrase ‘God created Man in his own image’. This ‘divine image’, the characteristics of which we must study in detail, can be found on all levels, and is the hallmark of a cosmos.

Rodney Collin

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Carl Sagan

Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination.

H. P. Lovecraft

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Carl Sagan

Anyone contemplating world war is certifiably insane, no matter how calm they seem.