Carl Sagan’s Love for the Natural World

November 9, 1934  
Today is the birthday of the American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author Carl Sagan, born on this day in Brooklyn, New York.
Carl helped explain space to the masses through his articles, books, and popular public television series “Cosmos."
Here on earth, gardeners delight in his words about the natural world.
 
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
— Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author
 
A book is made from a tree.
It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years.
Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.
Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.
— Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author
 
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.
― Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author, Cosmos