# Quote — Carl Sagan, Cosmos

> Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.

- Author: [Carl Sagan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan.md)
- Book: [Cosmos](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos.md)
- Page: 339
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Cosmos_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos/human-history-can

## More from this book

> I have...a terrible need...shall I say the word?...of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

p. 217 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos/i-have-a-terrible.md)

> For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

p. 173 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos/for-a-long.md)

> If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

p. 218 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-sagan/cosmos/if-you-wish.md)