Carl Sagan is my favorite person ever, and I try to live by his wisdom. Here are a number of my favorite quotes, and how they encapsulate our lives as we head back to college in the fall.
1. “I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.”
How you feel when you’re trying to find your classroom in a building you’ve never been to before, or you’re trying to find which field your team is practicing on.
2. “Somewhere, Something incredible is waiting to be known.”
How you feel as you sit in that first class, the one you’re excited about. This is the class that will blow your mind and create a scholar out of you. All is well until the first exam of the semester.
3. “If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
How you feel when you have to cook for yourself again. When your parents have been cooking for you all summer, cooking anything more elaborate than ramen feels like an immense chore. We have to do this everyday?
4. “Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning generations.”
When you get together with your classmates to work together on homework assignments. In many science classes, but especially in Physics, there are simply not enough hours in a day—nor cells in one person’s brain—to complete each homework set alone.
5. “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
When you’ve been procrastinating studying for that one class because you’ve been out and about enjoying fall, but the reality hits you in one fell swoop. So you get to work instead of going to that 3rd Halloween party.
6. “For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it actually is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
Deep down, you know that you can’t stay awake for 48 hours. Sometimes finishing all of your work—on top of other responsibilities—is a satisfying delusion, and you need to grasp the fact that you need sleep more than you need a perfect homework set.
7. “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.”
As liberal as college campuses are, the election this November is bound to stir up the Trump supporters on campus. Try to keep this in mind as you’re walking to class and pass a small mob of supporters, or when you go online and see the vile bigotry spewing from their keyboards.
8. “Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”
How you feel when you see freshman struggling to figure out LifeTM. Living in a dorm with lots of other new adults trying to adult for the first time is bound to make you question what the hell people are thinking, and wishing that college taught courses on a basic understanding of the world.
9. “Skeptical scrutiny is the means by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
When you start talking philosophy with your drunk friends at 2 a.m., that could either be deep thoughts or deep nonsense, and it’ll be up to your sober scrutiny the next day to determine that.
10. "Billions and Billions."
How much we have to pay for tuition.
