Carl Sagan Quotes

#1. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

Carl Sagan

#2. In the year 540 B.C. or thereabouts, on the island of Samos, there came to power a tyrant named Polycrates. He seems to have started as a caterer and then gone on to international piracy.

Carl Sagan

#3. You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

Carl Sagan

#4. We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.

Carl Sagan

#5. The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well they must be far from civilization.

Carl Sagan

#6. Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.

Carl Sagan

#7. It was difficult to hold Broca's brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there - his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments.

Carl Sagan

#8. Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our earthly hopes and fears. But our psychological predispositions pro or con must not mislead us. All that matters is the evidence, and the evidence is not yet in.

Carl Sagan

#9. One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.

Carl Sagan

#10. People's feelings are as strong as they always were, and skepticism is probably as unfashionable today as in any other age. Accordingly,

Carl Sagan

#11. The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.

Carl Sagan

#12. Science is not perfect. It's often misused; it's only a tool, but it's the best tool we have. Self-correcting , ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.

Carl Sagan

#13. To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.

Carl Sagan

#14. Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.

Carl Sagan

#15. A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

Carl Sagan

#16. How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds

Carl Sagan

#17. With an ambassador, you're supposed to put your best foot forward, and we've been sending mainly crap to space for forty years.

Carl Sagan

#18. Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.

Carl Sagan

#19. The total number of such worlds are, as I said, something of the order of a trillion, or 10^12, a one followed by twelve zeros, of which Earth represents just one, all in the family of the Sun. And our star, of course, is one of a vast multitude.

Carl Sagan

#20. Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.

Carl Sagan

#21. The passion to explore is at the heart of being human.

Carl Sagan

#22. If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Carl Sagan

#23. The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it.

Carl Sagan

#24. If you want to make a [rhubarb] pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe.

Carl Sagan

#25. We sometimes hear of things that can travel faster than light. Something called 'the speed of thought' is occasionally proffered. This is an exceptionally silly notion especially since the speed of impulses through the neutrons in our brain is about the same as the speed of a donkey cart.

Carl Sagan

#26. Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?

Carl Sagan

#27. It's no surprise that appeals to a state of mind called faith can relieve symptoms caused, at least in part, by another, perhaps not very different state of mind.

Carl Sagan

#28. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

Carl Sagan

#29. What if, despite all our pretense and disguise, it was necessary to appear in public with the person we loved most of all? Imagine this a prerequisite for social discourse on Earth.

Carl Sagan

#30. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

Carl Sagan

#31. All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

Carl Sagan

#32. Science is a way to not fool ourselves.

Carl Sagan

#33. We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

Carl Sagan

#34. Adolf Hitler! Ken, it makes me furious. Forty million people die to defeat that megalomaniac, and he's the star of the first broadcast to another civilization? He's representing us. And them. It's that madman's dream come true.

Carl Sagan

#35. Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

Carl Sagan

#36. Had Jupiter been several dozen times more massive, the matter in its interior would have undergone thermonuclear reactions, and Jupiter would have begun to shine by its own light. The largest planet is a star that failed.

Carl Sagan

#37. The symbolism seemed so apt. The same technology that can propel apocalyptic weapons from continent to continent would enable the first human voyage to another planet. It was a choice of fitting mythic power: to embrace the planet named after, rather than the madness ascribed to, the god of war.

Carl Sagan

#38. Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

Carl Sagan

#39. But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

Carl Sagan

#40. Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

Carl Sagan

#41. Dear Friend, Just a line to show that I am alive & kicking and going grand. It's a treat.

Carl Sagan

#42. Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way - seeing for them also.

Carl Sagan

#43. Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

Carl Sagan

#44. I'm only a four-dimensional creature. Haven't got a clue how to visualise infinity. Even Einstein hadn't. I know because I asked him

Carl Sagan

#45. Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?

Carl Sagan

#46. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

Carl Sagan

#47. Dartmouth College employs computer learning techniques in a very broad array of courses. For example, a student can gain a deep insight into the statistics of Mendelian genetics in an hour with the computer rather than spend a year crossing fruit flies
in the laboratory.

Carl Sagan

#48. [an encounter in space] Some celestial event. No
no words
no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful ... I had no idea. I had no idea.

Carl Sagan

#49. Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning.

Carl Sagan

#50. Especially where the implications of what we think we are seeing seem to be profound, we may not exercise adequate self-discipline and self-criticism.

Carl Sagan

#51. And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?

Carl Sagan

#52. Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it.
Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse

Carl Sagan

#53. By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

Carl Sagan

#54. Every star may be a sun to someone.

Carl Sagan

#55. Books are proof humans can do magic

Carl Sagan

#56. If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason - and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers.

Carl Sagan

#57. We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.

Carl Sagan

#58. Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

Carl Sagan

#59. The lure of the marvelous blunts our critical faculties.

Carl Sagan

#60. Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.

Carl Sagan

#61. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'

Carl Sagan

#62. I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

Carl Sagan

#63. But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?

Carl Sagan

#64. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Carl Sagan

#65. Our politics, economics, advertising, and religions (New Age and Old) are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism,

Carl Sagan

#66. The fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true.

Carl Sagan

#67. I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

Carl Sagan

#68. The Sphinx is missing a nose. Someone shot it off in a moment of idle desecration - some say it was Mameluke Turks, others, Napoleonic soldiers.

Carl Sagan

#69. I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I'd like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.

Carl Sagan

#70. The early Sumerian pictograph for god was an asterisk, the symbol of the stars. The early Aztec word for god was Teotl, and its glyph was a representation of the Sun. The heavens were called Teoatl, the godsea, the cosmic ocean.

Carl Sagan

#71. The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

Carl Sagan

#72. We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.

Carl Sagan

#73. We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning.

Carl Sagan

#74. In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak?

Carl Sagan

#75. The Greek religion explained that diffuse band of light in the night sky as the milk of Hera, squirted from her breast across the heavens, a legend that is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way.

Carl Sagan

#76. If the press descended, the science would surely suffer.

Carl Sagan

#77. I reject the notion that science is by its nature secretive. Its culture and ethos are, and for very good reason, collective, collaborative, and communicative.

Carl Sagan

#78. Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed - if they're here, I want to know about them.

Carl Sagan

#79. When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

Carl Sagan

#80. We are a way of the universe knowing itself.

Carl Sagan

#81. Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan

#82. You have to know the past to understand the present.

Carl Sagan

#83. Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.

Carl Sagan

#84. Accommodation to change, the thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures are keys to the survival of civilization and perhaps of the human species.

Carl Sagan

#85. Voltaire argued that if God did not exist Man would be obliged to invent him, and was reviled for the remark.

Carl Sagan

#86. A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.

Carl Sagan

#87. Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

Carl Sagan

#88. For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Carl Sagan

#89. Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

Carl Sagan

#90. My wonder button is being pushed all the time.

Carl Sagan

#91. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

Carl Sagan

#92. Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

Carl Sagan

#93. And reading itself is an amazing activity: You glance at a thin, flat object made from a tree ... and the voice of the author begins to speak inside your head. (Hello!)

Carl Sagan

#94. It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

Carl Sagan

#95. Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it's like democracy. Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses of action.

Carl Sagan

#96. The first two letters of the name Pluto are the initials of Percival Lowell. Its symbol is , a planetary monogram. But Lowell's lifelong love was the planet Mars. He was electrified by the announcement in 1877 by an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, of canali on Mars.

Carl Sagan

#97. We live in an in-between universe where things change all right ... but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.

Carl Sagan

#98. Not all bits have equal value.

Carl Sagan

#99. My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic.

Carl Sagan

#100. If anything like this is true, then we would be denied even our self-congratulatory distinction of being the only animal that makes self-congratulatory distinctions.

Carl Sagan