A Quote by Carl Sagan

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Carl Sagan

Quote Topics

Benign Hostile Indifferent Merely Neither Nor Seems Universe

Quote Author

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

The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic.

Sebastian Horsley

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent

Joan Holmes

You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars.

Sebastian Horsley

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

Richard Dawkins

Academic culture is not merely indifferent to teaching, it is actively hostile to it.

Charlie Sykes

The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent

Stanley Kubrick

Where there is Love and Wisdom, there is neither Fear nor Ignorance. Where there is Patience and Humility, there is neither Anger nor Annoyance. Where there is Poverty and Joy, there is neither Cupidity nor Avarice. Where there is Peace and Contemplation, there is neither Care nor Restlessness. Where there is the Fear of God to guard the dwelling, there no enemy can enter. Where there is Mercy and Prudence, there is neither Excess nor Harshness.

Francis of Assisi

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.

John Adams

The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to it. Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.

Louise Lester

Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Time heals. No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue is not a good thing. It is merely the wound's other face.

Karen Marie Moning

Perseverance is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy; for it seems to be only the enduring of certain inclinations and opinions which men neither give themselves nor take away from themselves.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.

Ramana Maharshi

neither poems nor prose just a length of rope just the wet earth -- that's the way home. neither vodka nor bread just bursts of rage just more new graves -- that's youth and that's love. neither sleep nor waking neither joy nor laughter just tears in the night -- so the rope, paper, knife.

Tadeusz Borowski

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.