Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 15

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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; it has no in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental insights.

  Carl Sagan

  Knowledge, Science, Ideas

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• When you buy a used car, you kick the tires, you look at the odometer, you open up the hood. If you do not feel yourself an expert in automobile engines, you bring a friend who is. And you do this with something as unimportant as an automobile. But on the issues of the transcendent, of ethics, of morals, of the origins of the world, of the nature of human beings, on those issues should we not insist upon at least equally skeptical scrutiny?

  Carl Sagan

  Issues, Car, World

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• Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things-from subatomic particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Thinking, Goal

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• [Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science.

  Carl Sagan

  Heart, Science, Kepler

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• The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Flames, Darkness

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.

  Carl Sagan

  Self, Dumb, Criticism

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• As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Sky, Earth

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

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• All colours are arbitrary.

  Carl Sagan

  Arbitrary, Colour

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• Not all bits have equal value.

  Carl Sagan

  Equal, Science And Technology, Bits

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.315, Ballantine Books

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• We can always take but never give.

  Carl Sagan

  Giving

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• You mean am I for it or against it? You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on Vega, and you want to make sure I give the right answer? Okay. Overpopulation is why I'm in favor of homosexuality and a celibate clergy. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

  Carl Sagan

  Mean, Thinking, Vegas

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.243, Simon and Schuster

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• The Hindu religion is the only 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.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Numbers, Cosmos

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.284, Ballantine Books

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• For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Civilization, Ideas, Tuesday

  "Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1980.

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• The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.

  Carl Sagan

  Law, Atheism, Doe

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• Probably a dozen times since their death I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them ... It doesn't seem strange to me.

  Carl Sagan

  Mother, Father, Science

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• All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are "scientifically illiterate." That's...the same fraction...of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Smart, Passion

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• We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten 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. 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

  Stars, Spring, Long

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• We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.

  Carl Sagan

  Ocean, Space, Earth

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series, Episode 1: The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean, 1990.

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• I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

  Carl Sagan

  Song, Years, Worry

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• We seem, these days, much more willing to recognize the perils before us than we were even a decade ago. The newly recognized dangers threaten all of us, equally. No one can say how it will turn out down here. But this is also, we may note, the first time that a species has become able to journey to the planets and the stars. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense a stirring of the breeze.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Journey, Sea

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• Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Science, People

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.217, Ballantine Books

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• Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Past, Way

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.271, Ballantine Books

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• I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Science, Religion

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• Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

  Carl Sagan

  Book, Magic, Cosmos

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.305, Ballantine Books

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• If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Data, Support You

  "The Burden of Skepticism" by Carl Sagan, 1987.

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