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Carl Sagan Quotes
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Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known as a science popularizer and communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many popular science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Broca's Brain and Pale Blue Dot, and narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The most widely-watched series in the history of American public television, Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 different countries. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name. His papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress.Sagan advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence . He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Dragons of Eden, and, regarding Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, two Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, and the Hugo Award. He married three times and had five children. After suffering from myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62, on December 20, 1996. Wikipedia  

✵ 9. November 1934 – 20. December 1996   •   Other names Karl Seýgan
Carl Sagan photo
Carl Sagan: 365   quotes 50   likes

Carl Sagan Quotes

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

p. 4
Source: The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

“Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan
Wisdom , Courage , Question , Universe

“Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Way , Universe

“We can't help it. Life looks for life.”

Carl Sagan
Life , Help

“We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

53 min 54 sec
Source: We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to selfawareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
Context: And we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos we've begun, at last, to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars organized collections of 10 billion-billion-billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps, throughout the cosmos.

Star

“What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star , Animals

“When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star , Distant , Night

“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Children , Dreams , Future

“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.”

Carl Sagan
Way , Universe

“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 book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 11 : The Dragon in My Garage, p. 180
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Context: 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. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

World , Understanding , Thinking

“[:]

If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.”

Carl Sagan
Science

“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Intelligence

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

Carl Sagan
World , Understanding

“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
Knowledge , Personality

“The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star , Time , Sun

“I've always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

Courage

“Those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.”

Carl Sagan

Introduction (p. 7)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)
Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“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
Truth , Imagination

“We make our purpose.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Life , World , Tree , Heart

“If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

“A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star , Sun

“Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

Love

“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.”

Carl Sagan
Science

“The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Star , Time , Past

“Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

"With Science on Our Side" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1994/01/09/with-science-on-our-side/9e5d2141-9d53-4b4b-aa0f-7a6a0faff845/, Washington Post (January 9, 1994)
Variant: Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Love , World

“Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

17 min 40 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

War , Fear , Thinking , Personality

“The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 29

Error , Future

“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

Carl Sagan, author interview
PT Staff
Psychology Today
1996
January
01
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?page=3

Nature , Science

“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 398

World , Travel , Star , Knowledge

“Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Religion , Way , Business , Knowledge

“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 book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Universe , Time

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

Carl Sagan
Religion , Science

“All colours are arbitrary.”

Carl Sagan

“Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 53
Context: Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star. We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth. We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects. We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death. We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half. We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars. We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.

Fear , Universe , Time

“Anything you don’t understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

God , World , Intelligence , Understanding

“You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years," he said. "Think of it more as….. cultivated.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

Thinking , Universe

“If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

33 min 20 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Heaven and Hell [Episode 4]
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his ideas were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts; rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system, and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

Science

“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

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

God , Religion , Feeling , Idea

“Science is only a Latin word for knowledge”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Knowledge , Science

“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

Source: Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Tree

“We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Distant

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

Carl Sagan

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

People , Feeling , Thinking

“Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

God

“What I’m saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 164)

God , Way , Thinking