“We are star stuff.”

The most profound statement from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Sagan was well versed in world religions and mythologies, and was able to present modern science as the ultimate fulfillment of what earlier humans who searched for meaning could only see through a glass darkly. We have seen inside the atom and our eyes have reached far beyond with the Hubble Telescope. Sagan wanted us to feel significant and insignificant at the same time. To understand that the Earth (as seen from the Voyager space probe on the outer skirts of the solar system) is just a “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam.” But to also know that the Earth is the only planet that we know of that has life—teems in life!—and that man’s role in the Earth is ultimate. Humans are the one’s with the understanding of what is the Earth, what is the Universe. Our obligation to our planet, our home, and our species is utmost.

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos - Evolution