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

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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

  85 Copy quote

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

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Life, Religious

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

  94 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.

  138 Copy quote
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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.

  63 Copy quote
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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

  119 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.

  55 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

  36 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

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• 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.

  26 Copy quote

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

  Carl Sagan

  Absence, Evidence

  96 Copy quote

• It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

  Carl Sagan

  Death, Witty, Atheist

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.32, Ballantine Books

  125 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

  21 Copy quote

• Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.

  Carl Sagan

  Bird, Aviation, Flyers

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• There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Thinking, May

  36 Copy quote

• If you look at Earth from space you see a dot, that's here. That's home. That's us. It underscores the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

  Carl Sagan

  Responsibility, Home, Blue

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

  60 Copy quote

• Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

  Carl Sagan

  Love, Inspirational, Perspective

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.371, Ballantine Books

  27 Copy quote
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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

  52 Copy quote

• Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupidity, Glorification

  12 Copy quote

• Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Life, Truth

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.145, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  58 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.

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

  Carl Sagan

  God, Spiritual, Philosophy

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.54, Ballantine Books

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• The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Fall, Mean

  "Scientists & Their Gods". U.S. News & World Report, Vol. 111, 1991.

  26 Copy quote

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

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Littles, Injury

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• It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, there's a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more 'numinous' than the Ressurection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don't they?

  Carl Sagan

  Couple, Lying, Reading

  37 Copy quote

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