Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 23

Quotes about:

• One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

  Carl Sagan

  Media, People, Stupidity

  10 Copy quote

• Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Loyalty, Cosmos, Earth

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

  7 Copy quote

• The universe forces those who live in it to understand it.

  Carl Sagan

  Force, Regularity, Predictability

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.19, Ballantine Books

  33 Copy quote

• Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Television, Vastness

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Distance, Mean

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.31, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Aristocracy, Earth, Monkeys

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Years, Wilderness

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

  Carl Sagan

  Latin

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.218, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.

  Carl Sagan

  Moon, Space, Civilization

  4 Copy quote

• We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true and the beautiful. But it would be a great mistake to ignore where we have come from in our attempt to determine where we are going.

  Carl Sagan

  Beautiful, Mistake, Humanity

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.6, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Long, Tree, Savannah

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.87, Ballantine Books

  11 Copy quote

• I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Fiction, Advantage

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.47, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• We can't help it. Life looks for life.

  Carl Sagan

  Looks, Helping, Physics

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.21, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

• Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.

  Carl Sagan

  Revenge, Military, War

  4 Copy quote

• Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

  Carl Sagan

  Keys, Experiments

  "Wonder and Skepticism" by Carl Sagan, www.csicop.org. January-February 1995.

  4 Copy quote

• Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria, the Centre of science and learning in the ancient world. Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else, whom he called barbarians and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. He thought it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples. But Erathosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism, he believed there was good and bad in every nation.

  Carl Sagan

  Greek, Humanity, Library

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]". TV series, 1990.

  7 Copy quote

• [S]cience has itself become a kind of religion.

  Carl Sagan

  Religion, Atheism, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• Quickly capping 363 oil well fires in a war zone is impossible. The fires would burn out of control until they put themselves out... The resulting soot might well stretch over all of South Asia... It could be carried around the world... [and] the consequences could be dire. Beneath such a pall sunlight would be dimmed, temperatures lowered and droughts more frequent. Spring and summer frosts may be expected... This endangerment of the food supplies... appears to be likely enough that it should affect the war plans.

  Carl Sagan

  Summer, Spring, War

  4 Copy quote

• We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Space, Atoms

  4 Copy quote

• Billions and billions.

  Carl Sagan

  Astronomy, Billions, Cosmology

  Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan (1999). “Carl Sagan: a life”, John Wiley & Sons

  7 Copy quote

• In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Civilization, Long

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

  4 Copy quote

• [N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Data, Ideas

  8 Copy quote

• If we teach only the findings and products of science - no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be - without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Average, Pseudoscience

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.44, Ballantine Books

  11 Copy quote

• If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.

  Carl Sagan

  Winter, Science, Nuclear

  4 Copy quote

• In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams!

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Mars, Sand

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.129, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

Page 23 of 24

First

← Prev

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin