Carl Sagan Quotes

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 magic.

I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.

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. ... Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

There's something magical about the idea that you can write something down and someone else can read it. I'm still mildly agog about that.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be -- to me in all events -- a terrible thing without books.

Until we invent telepathy, books are our best choice for understanding the rest of humanity.

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

The ability to write and read books is one of the things that transformed us as a species.

May books spread the world over!

Books are challenging and inspirational to me.

Reading is a huge part of life.

I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

There's definitely a value in being literate.

Anyone who doesn't read doesn't have any business writing.

Now, I'm a pretty fast and avid reader. But you can't learn the same things in a book or on the Internet that you can in a personal talk with somebody.

The books you read as a young person are books that stay with you forever. I think that is the biggest privilege of writing for young people. You feel like you can help shape somebody.

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

I really love fantasy. I have to say it is my favourite genre to read and one of the genres I love the most to write.

If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.

Books are like tweets, except longer.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.