Carl Sagan: Trending quotes (page 17)

“If I were to propose to you that my arm could be in this position or in that position but it would be forbidden by the laws of nature to be in some intermediate position, that would likely strike you as absurd, as contrary to experience. And yet on the subatomic level, there is a quantization of energy and position and momentum. The reason that it seems counterintuitive is that is that we are not ordinarily down at the level of the very small, where quantum effects dominate.”

Carl Sagan

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Law , Nature

“War is murder writ large.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 326

War

“Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

Carl Sagan

54 min 25 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

Loyalty , Spring

“What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Carl Sagan

1 min 10 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Encyclopedia Galactica [Episode 12]

Support

“For as long as there been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as a celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 193

Courage , Night , Search , Sun

“We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path that will take us to the stars—unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 25, “The Amniotic Universe” (p. 368)

Star , Stupidity

“In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 25, “The Amniotic Universe” (p. 364)

Idea , Making love

“It is a good idea not to make up our minds prematurely on this issue. It is probably best not to let our personal preferences influence the decision. Rather, in the long tradition of successful science, we should permit nature to reveal the truth to us.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 24, “Gott and the Turtles” (p. 351)

Success , Personality , Nature , Truth

“Proponents of doctrinal religions—ones in which a particular body of belief is prized and infidels scorned—will be threatened by the courageous pursuit of knowledge. We hear from such people that it may be dangerous to probe too deeply. Many people have inherited their religion like their eye color: they consider it not a thing to think very deeply about, and in any case beyond our control. But those with a set of beliefs they profess to feel deeply about, which they have selected without an unbiased sifting through the facts and the alternatives, will feel uncomfortably challenged by searching questions. Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (pp. 339-340)

Courage , Religion , Anger , Search

“The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 339)

Understanding , Nature , Universe , Problem

“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution encourages a diversity of religions but does not prohibit criticism of religion. In fact it protects and encourages criticism of religion. Religions ought to be subject to at least the same degree of skepticism as, for example, contentions about UFO visitations or Velikovskian catastrophism. I think it is healthy for the religions themselves to foster skepticism about the fundamental underpinnings of their evidential bases. There is no question that religion provides a solace and support, a bulwark in time of emotional need, and can serve extremely useful social roles. But it by no means follows that religion should be immune from testing, from critical scrutiny, from skepticism. It is striking how little skeptical discussion of religion there is in the nation that Tom Paine, the author of The Age of Reason, helped to found. I hold that belief systems that cannot survive scrutiny are probably not worth having.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 338)

Pain , Religion , Time , Question

“But there is a chance that the answers will discomfit a great many bureaucratic and doctrinal religions. The idea of religion as a body of belief, immune to criticism, fixed forever by some founder is, I think, a prescription for the long-term decay of the religion, especially lately.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 338)

Idea , Thinking , Religion , Chance

“The idea that a God or gods is necessary to effect one or more of these origins has been under repeated attack over the last few thousand years. Because we know something about phototropism and plant hormones, we can understand the opening of the morning glory independent of divine microintervention. It is the same for the entire skein of causality back to the origin of the universe. As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 335)

God , Understanding , Learning , Universe

“It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (pp. 332-333)

Intelligence , Religion , Making love

“Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is irrelevant. Ten-year-olds do not read the scientific literature.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 9, “Science Fiction—A Personal View” (p. 172)

Science , Literature , Reading

“In the face of all this, many of the standard ideas of science fiction seem to me to pale by comparison. I see the relative absence of these things and the distortions of scientific thinking often encountered in science fiction as terrible wasted opportunities. Real science is as amenable to exciting and engrossing fiction as fake science, and I think it is important to exploit every opportunity to convey scientific ideas in a civilization which is both based upon science and does almost nothing to ensure that science is understood.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 9, “Science Fiction—A Personal View” (p. 166)

Idea , Science , Thinking

“St. Anselm argued that since we can imagine a perfect being, he must exist—because he would not be perfect without the added perfection of existence. This so-called ontological argument was more or less promptly attacked on two grounds: (1) Can we imagine a completely perfect being? (2) Is it obvious that perfection is augmented by existence? To the modern ear such pious arguments seem to be about words and definitions rather than about external reality.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 8, “Norman Bloom, Messenger of God” (p. 152)

Perfection , Imagination , Reality

“Vigorous criticism is more constructive in science than in some other areas of human endeavor because in science there are adequate standards of validity that can be agreed upon by competent practitioners the world over. The objective of such criticism is not to suppress but rather to encourage the advance of new ideas: those that survive a firm skeptical scrutiny have a fighting chance of being right, or at least useful.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 7, “Venus and Dr. Velikovsky” (p. 98)

Chance , Fight , World , Idea

“A clear prediction in an area undergoing vigorous study permits doctrines to be subject to disproof. The last posture a bureaucratic religion wishes to find itself in is vulnerability to disproof, where an experiment can be performed on which the religion stands or falls.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 332)

Study , Religion

“Very few scientists actually plunge into the murky waters of testing or challenging borderline or pseudo-scientific beliefs. The chance of finding out something really interesting—except about human nature—seems small, and the amount of time required seems large. I believe that scientists should spend more time in discussing these issues, but the fact that a given contention lacks vigorous scientific opposition in no way implies that scientists think it is reasonable.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 5, “Night Walkers and Mystery Mongers: Sense and Nonsense at the End of Science” (p. 69)

Chance , Time , Nature , Water