Physicist Brian Cox quoted the beautiful aforementioned phrase on Colbert’s show, attributing it to Carl Sagan.
Googling it yielded few results but they seem to be all quoting Brian Cox quoting Carl Sagan.
Did Sagan really say it? I mean, it’s Brian Cox. He doesn’t seem the type to traffic in apocryphal quotes.
Sounds a bit like Samuel Butler: “A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.”
George Wald said the very similar “A physicist is the atom’s way of knowing about atoms” in a lecture he gave in the 1980s (apparently at several locations). George Wald: Life and Mind in the Universe
The first law of quotes is that they will be attributed to the most famous plausible person - and Sagan trumps Wald.
Ah, indeed. I suspected as much. It’s sort of a Goliath effect for quotes. Still, it’s a lovely sentiment.
Sagan did famously say “We are a way for the universe to know itself,” which expresses much the same sentiment.
“ The first law of quotes is that they will be attributed to the most famous plausible person” - Oscar Wilde
In this article from 2022 he credits Richard Feynman. He does indeed traffic in apocryphal quotes, it seems.
It’s funny that he gives credit elsewhere when it might be a Brian Cox original. There’s probably a term for an original phrase presented as a quote. Does anybody know that? I wonder who’s quote it’s going to be next time he’s promoting something.