Carl Sagan Quotes

Quotes about:

• One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

  Carl Sagan

  Taken, Science, Long

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.314, Ballantine Books

  141 Copy quote

• Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

  Carl Sagan

  Positive, Hope, Educational

  Nobel Award Ceremony Speech by Professor Olga Botner, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2017.

  174 Copy quote
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  If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Ifs

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.354, Ballantine Books

  51 Copy quote

• If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Country, Children, Teaching

  "The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Book by Carl Sagan, ch. 25: "Real Patriots Ask Questions", 1995.

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  The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Iron, Apples

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.255, Ballantine Books

  136 Copy quote

• Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupidity, Glorification

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  We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

  Carl Sagan

  Motivational, Education, Knowledge

  "Why We Need To Understand Science". The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3, www.csicop.org. Spring 1990.

  98 Copy quote

• I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hands, America

  "A Disturbing 1995 Prediction by Carl Sagan Accurately Describes America of Today" by PAUL RATNER, bigthink.com.

  81 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Prejudice, Vastness

  "Wonder and Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer 19 (1), www.csicop.org. January/February 1995.

  74 Copy quote

• You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

  Carl Sagan

  Death, Faith, Atheist

  46 Copy quote

• We are the universe experiencing itself.

  Carl Sagan

  Universe

  5 Copy quote

• Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

  Carl Sagan

  Life, Art, Motivation

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.26, Ballantine Books

  132 Copy quote

• The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

  Carl Sagan

  Absence, Evidence

  111 Copy quote

• 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

  Smart, Knowing, Judgement

  12 Copy quote

• I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.

  Carl Sagan

  Leader, Independence, Promise

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.546, Ballantine Books

  14 Copy quote

• We are, each of us, a multitude. Within us is a little universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Littles, Injury

  12 Copy quote
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  We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

  Carl Sagan

  Time, Butterfly, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.49, Ballantine Books

  51 Copy quote

• Our passion for learning ... is our tool for survival.

  Carl Sagan

  Passion, Learning, Science

  12 Copy quote

• We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Rocks, Circles

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  Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

  Carl Sagan

  Comforting, Fantasy, Hard

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.263, Ballantine Books

  58 Copy quote
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  The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

  Carl Sagan

  Wisdom, Understanding, Brain

  102 Copy quote

• I don't want to believe. I want to know.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Life, Religious

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  115 Copy quote

• Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

  Carl Sagan

  Grateful, Opportunity, Everyday

  "In the Valley of the Shadow". Parade, March 10, 1996.

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• The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Night, Ideas

  "Cosmos". Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

  81 Copy quote

• National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Stars, Science

  "Cosmos". p. 318. Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

  32 Copy quote

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