“What an astonishing thing a book is.”
42 min 33 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Persistence of Memory [Episode 11]
Context: What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Carl Sagan 365
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996Related quotes
“The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing.”
As quoted by Gerald James Whitrow, The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)
“Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.”
“I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.”
Lord Illingworth, Act III
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Interview with Brett Martin for Time Out New York (April 1-8, 1999, on-line). http://www.hwwilson.com/_home/bios/1997004856.htm
Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 23, “The Skycladdische and the Sangrimancer” (p. 331)