Carl Sagan II

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Milton Berle

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?

Laughter is an instant vacation.

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.

I'd rather be a 'could-be' if I cannot be an 'are' because a 'could-be' is a 'maybe' who is reaching for a star. I'd rather be a 'has-been' than a 'might-have-been' by far; for a 'might-have-been' has never been, but a 'has' was once an 'are.

Committee - a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.

We owe a lot to Thomas Edison-if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think.

A man falls down a flight of stairs and somebody rushes over to him and asks, "Did you miss a step?" 
"No," he answers, "I hit every one of them!

I know why superman left krypton. Earth was the only place where he could get steriods!

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

Brian Tracy

Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. 
Unsuccessful people are always asking, "What's in it for me?

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude 
toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

Look for the good in every person and every situation. You'll almost always 
find it.

I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more 
chances, Be more active, Show up more often.

An attitude of positive expectation is the mark of the superior personality.

Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear.

The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.

The only real limitation on your abilities is the level of your desires. If you 
want it badly enough, there are no limits on what you can achieve.

Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.

You have within you, right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.

Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.

Always choose the future over the past. What do we do now?

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what 
their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day 
toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. 

We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.

Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Galileo Galilei II

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.

Passion is the genesis of genius.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.

John Lennon II

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

The more I see, the less I know for sure.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. . .

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

Jude Deveraux

My soul will find yours.

Love can make even nice people do awful things.

Time has no meaning,
Love will endure.

Were I to die tomorrow, my soul would remember you.

There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun.

It's an odd thing about love. When someone you love cries, your heart melts. But when someone you don't love cries, you look at them and think, Why are you telling 'me' this?

I would rather die then try to live without you”, “May you always love me and want me but never have me”, “May you never love anyone but me”.

We women aren't good at hints. We like solid declarations of love and forever.

What kind of wedding do you want? "The one with a groom."

It was flattering to have someone listen so intently to something that was so personal.

Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.
It did not end well.

Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.

Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?

Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.

It's not like there's a law against flying.
Yes there is. The law of gravity.

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.

Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens. I need you to remember that I love you.

Love is a luxury.
No. Love is an element.
An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.

She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

Hey! My body may be small, but my soul is large. It’s why I wear platforms. So I can reach the top of my soul.

A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all.

David Nicholls

This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.

Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.

You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.

You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it.

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.

Melissa Marr

Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.

And he smiled at her, truely smiled- wicked and lovely...

He looked good, like sin in a suit.

What does it mean when nightmares dream of peace? When shadows wish for light?

Just be you-strong and honest. The rest falls into place if you do that. It always has. It always will. Remember that. No matter what happens over the . . . centuries ahead of you, remember to be honest with yourself. And if you fail, forgive yourself. You'll make mistakes. The whole world is new, and they have so many more years in the then you.

Choose to be happy. It is what we have all done.

Talking won't change it. But sometimes it was what she wanted most, to tell someone; often, though, she just wanted to escape those horrid feelings, to escape herself, so there was no pain, no fear, no ugliness.

Mortals are such fragile things. Just tender feelings walking around exposed in their delicate shells...Easy to crush.

Life is too short to read books that I'm not enjoying.

Sometimes being human sucks.

Chase away sorrow by living.