“And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?”

—  Carl Sagan

Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic…" by Carl Sagan?
Carl Sagan photo
Carl Sagan 365
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996

Related quotes

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“As on the crystal surface of a lake
The trembling shafts of sunlight mirrored are,
Leaping to roof-top, and, at random glancing,
Sparkle and gleam, in all directions dancing.”

Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume,
Dal sol percossa o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti va con lungo salto
A destra et a sinistra, e basso et alto.
Canto VIII, stanza 71 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Anne Michaels photo
Agnes de Mille photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Frédéric Bazille photo

“Certain parts of the forest [the forest Bas Bréau, near Barbizon ] are truly wonderful. We can't even imagine such oak trees in Montpellier.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

Bazille's quote refers to travelling and painting together landscape in-open-air with Monet, Pisarro and Renoir, all students of the Paris art-teacher w:Charles Gleyre.
1861 - 1865
Source: Frédéric Bazille and early Impressionism, Marandel; Daulte et al. p. 155

Primo Levi photo

“We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

As quoted in The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (1994) by Eric J. Hobsbawm

Benny Wenda photo

“If you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as one.”

Benny Wenda (1975) West Papuan activist

As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/why-we-are-losing-a-world-of-languages

Albert Pike photo

“To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children, is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted.”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 312
Context: The true Mason labors for the benefit of those that are to come after him, and for the advancement and improvement of his race. That is a poor ambition which contents itself within the limits of a single life. All men who deserve to live, desire to survive their funerals, and to live afterward in the good that they have done mankind, rather than in the fading characters written in men's memories. Most men desire to leave some work behind them that may outlast their own day and brief generation. That is an instinctive impulse, given by God, and often found in the rudest human heart; the surest proof of the soul's immortality, and of the fundamental difference between man and the wisest brutes. To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children, is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted.

Related topics