Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 11

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• It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo 's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.

  Carl Sagan

  Book, Punishment, Soul

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.62, Ballantine Books

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• 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

  Superstitions, Way, Bluffs

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.65, Ballantine Books

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• I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

  Carl Sagan

  Worship, Cosmology

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.48, Penguin

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• 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

  Dream, Children, Future

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.90, Ballantine Books

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• If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Superstitions, Too Much

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.298, Ballantine Books

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• In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, College, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.98, Ballantine Books

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• When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules.

  Carl Sagan

  Block, Molecules, Different

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.76, Penguin

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• Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want . . . but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy . . . try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

  Carl Sagan

  Sex, Children, Real

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• We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy.

  Carl Sagan

  Military, Common Humanity, Decision

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.178, Ballantine Books

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• The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.

  Carl Sagan

  Cosmos

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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

  Carl Sagan

  Mathematics, Certain, Pure

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.51, Ballantine Books

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• First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?

  Carl Sagan

  Two, Government, Firsts

  "Fictional character: S.R. Hadden". "Contact", www.imdb.com. 1997.

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• An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Doe, Certain

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.70, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.

  Carl Sagan

  Laughter, Doing You, Doe

  Broca's Brain ch. 5 (1979)

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• Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Self Questioning, Criticism

  Carl Sagan (1979). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”, Random House Inc

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• If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

  Carl Sagan

  Past, Ideas, Mind

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• It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

  Carl Sagan

  Passion, Sunset, Science

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.154, Ballantine Books

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• The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Merit, Different

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.12, Ballantine Books

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• The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's 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. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Lovely, Fundamentals

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 91, 1980.

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• People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Believe, Intelligent

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• The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Order, Principles

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• In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

  Carl Sagan

  Time, Space, Joy

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.162, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

  Carl Sagan

  Sunset, Romance, Doe

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.154, Ballantine Books

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• Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Self, Cosmos

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• Maxwell's Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents.

  Carl Sagan

  Impact, President, Maxwell

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