Jack

“Palmer, you think that if I haven't had your religious experience I can't appreciate the magnificence of your god. But it's just the opposite. I listen to you, and I think, His God is too small! One paltry planet, a few thousand years--hardly worth the attention of a minor deity, much less the Creator of the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact

“Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind-surely there had to be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? ...A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“A large ant, more enterprising than her fellows, had ventured onto the tablecloth and was briskly marching along the diagonal of one of the red and white squares. Suppressing a small twinge of revulsion, she gingerly flicked it back onto the grass--where it belonged.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact

“In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the Universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact