Carl Sagan Didn’t Just Explain the Universe — He Explained What It Means to Be Human

Every time I come across Carl Sagan’s quotes on my social media feeds, I pause. I take time to reflect on what he was trying to say.

When I moved to the US 24 years ago, I spent a lot of time in libraries, reading books and articles that might give me insight into the men and women who shaped the culture of this country. One name kept coming up again and again. Carl Sagan.

He was a scientist, and I wondered whether I would even be able to understand his words, let alone his genius.

I’m so glad I didn’t let that assumption stop me.

Sagan did something I rarely see, even now, among my fellow Americans. With his words, he continues to make this “vast, cold, and indifferent universe” (his words) feel intimate and warm.

Years later, I found myself watching full episodes of Cosmos on YouTube, where he patiently walked us through the universe’s origin story. He made science feel alive, not confined to classroom rigor or academic gatekeeping. He spoke out against nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and short-sighted power long before those positions were fashionable. To Sagan, knowledge always carried responsibility.

Here was a man so humble that he showed us how small our ego really is.

In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was more than 3.7 billion miles from Earth when it turned its camera back toward home. Our planet appeared as a tiny speck, less than a pixel, suspended in a sunbeam. And Sagan said something simple and profound.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”

“We are made of star-stuff,” he had told us many times before. Yes, that invisible dot contains every living human being, all our drama, our suffering, and our joy.

When you really sit with that idea, you understand that nothing really matters at the end of the day. Our political leanings. Our nationalism. Our drama. Our biases and petty hatreds.

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” Sagan wrote. But, he didn’t stop there. “It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

So while nothing really matters, we must still live a great life of kindness and responsibility.

Even while grappling with vast, cosmic ideas, Sagan never lost sight of the most intimate human experiences. He spoke openly about love, grief, and longing. Last week, I came across his reflections on the death of his parents.

I want to leave you with his words, because they feel universal, and because they offer quiet comfort. If you find the time, read them slowly.

And if your parents are still alive, call them.

Carl Sagan

“My parents died years ago. I was very close to them. I still miss them terribly. I know I always will. I long to believe that their essence, their personalities, what I loved so much about them, are – really and truly – still in existence somewhere. I wouldn’t ask very much, just five or ten minutes a year, say, to tell them about their grandchildren, to catch them up on the latest news, to remind them that I love them.

 

There’s a part of me – no matter how childish it sounds – that wonders how they are. “Is everything all right?” I want to ask. The last words I found myself saying to my father, at the moment of his death, were “Take care.”

 

Sometimes I dream that I’m talking to my parents, and suddenly – still immersed in the dreamwork – I’m seized by the overpowering realization that they didn’t really die, that it’s all been some kind of horrible mistake.

 

Why, here they are, alive and well, my father making wry jokes, my mother earnestly advising me to wear a muffler because the weather is chilly. When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.

 

So I don’t guffaw at the woman who visits her husband’s grave and chats him up every now and then, maybe on the anniversary of his death. It’s not hard to understand. And if I have difficulties with the ontological status of who she’s talking to, that’s all right. That’s not what this is about. This is about humans being human.”

Carl Sagan understood the universe. But more importantly, he understood what it was to be uniquely human.

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Featured Image Copyright: NASA/JPL – Just minutes after taking the image, Voyager powered down its camera system

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What Will You Do? 

If you’ve got one chance to make a dent in the universe. 

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~ Anais Nin