WIST Quotations

Sagan, Carl -- The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, ch. 26 (1973)

Dave — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 22:50:27 +0000

The fate of individual human beings may not now be connected in a deep way with the rest of the universe, but the matter out of which each of us is made is intimately tied to processes that occurred immense intervals of time and enormous distances in space away from us. Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American scientist and writer
The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, ch. 26 (1973)
(Source)

Sagan riffed off the "star-stuff" theme during his 1980 PBS TV series, Cosmos, ep. 9:

The Cosmos was originally all hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements were made in red giants and supernovas, and then blown off into space, where they were available for subsequent generations of stars and planets. Our sun is probably a 3rd generation star. Except for hydrogen and helium, every atom in the Sun and the Earth was synthesized in other stars. The silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the air, the carbon in our DNA, the gold in our banks, the uranium in our arsenals, were all made thousands of light years away and billions of years ago. Our planet, our society, and we ourselves, are built of star-stuff.

In the companion book for the series, chapter 9, he included this variation:

All the elements of the Earth except hydrogen and some helium have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. 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.

He also included this phrase toward the end of the TV series (specific episode unknown):

Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

A dozen years later, D. C. Fontana combined these thoughts in her script for Babylon 5, 2x04 "A Distant Star" [Prod. 204] (1994-11-16):

DELENN: The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.

Barbellion, W. N. P. -- The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 1912-12-22 (1919)

Dave — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 16:34:06 +0000

To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible — and eternal, so that come what may to my “Soul,” my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

W. N. P. Barbellion (1889–1919) English diarist [William Nero Pilate Barbellion, pen name of Bruce Frederick Cummings]
The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 1912-12-22 (1919)
(Source)

Ackerman, Diane -- A Natural History of Love, “Brain-Stem Sonata: The Neurophysiology of Love” (1994)

Dave — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 22:44:14 +0000

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven’s sonatas. Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz. Audrey Hepburn’s wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.

Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) American poet, author, naturalist
A Natural History of Love, “Brain-Stem Sonata: The Neurophysiology of Love” (1994)
(Source)

Butler, Samuel -- The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Sparks” (1912)

Dave — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:56:22 +0000

Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, “Sparks” (1912)
(Source)