Sagan’s line fuses two disciplines—emotional bravery and astronomical precision—into one act of attention. To reach beyond fear is not to deny it; it is to see it as sharply as an astronomer sights a coordinate: no blur, no myth, just careful notice. In this spirit, clarity becomes a form of courage, because it replaces dread’s vagueness with definitions and evidence. As Sagan urged in The Demon-Haunted World (1995), light is not only illumination but method, and method is what steadies our hands. [...]
