Interviewer: "didn't [sagan] Want To Believe?" Druyan:

We Are Living In A Society That Is Totally Dependent On Science And High Technology, And Yet Most Of Us Are Effectively Alienated And Excluded From Its Workings, From The Values Of Science, The Methods Of Science, And The Language Of Science. A Good Place To Start Would Be For As Many Of Us As Possible To Begin To Understand The Decision-making And The Basis For Those Decisions, And To Act Independently And Not Be Manipulated Into Thinking One Thing Or Another, But To Learn How To Think. That's What Science Does.

If You Have A Beating Heart, That's Good Enough.

If You Are Searching For Sacred Knowledge And Not Just A Palliative For Your Fears, Then You Will Train Yourself To Be A Good Skeptic.

Contrary To The Fantasies Of The Fundamentalists, There Was No Deathbed Conversion, No Last Minute Refuge Taken In A Comforting Vision Of A Heaven Or An Afterlife. For Carl, What Mattered Most Was What Was True, Not Merely What Would Make Us Feel Better. Even At This Moment When Anyone Would Be Forgiven For Turning Away From The Reality Of Our Situation, Carl Was Unflinching. As We Looked Deeply Into Each Other's Eyes, It Was With A Shared Conviction That Our Wondrous Life Together Was Ending Forever.

It Is A Great Tragedy That Science, This Wonderful Process For Finding Out What Is True, Has Ceded The Spiritual Uplift Of Its Central Revelations: The Vastness Of The Universe, The Immensity Of Time, The Relatedness Of All Life, And Life's Preciousness On Our Tiny Planet.