Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 23

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• ...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for religions and nations to sell. This is not an issue of which we might anticipate widespread skepticism. People will want to believe it, even if the evidence is meager to nil... compelling testimony ... provides that our personality, character, memory ... resides in the matter of the brain, it is easy not to focus on it, to find ways to evade the weight of the evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Spiritual, Memories, Believe

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• 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

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

  Carl Sagan

  Religion, Atheism, Kind

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• 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

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• 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

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• The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they've made a thorough mess of it. I mean, we're in deep trouble.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Atheist, Mean

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.

  Carl Sagan

  Other Worlds, Ends, Solar System

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.344, Ballantine Books

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

  Carl Sagan

  Keys, Experiments

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

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• 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.

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• Billions and billions.

  Carl Sagan

  Astronomy, Billions, Cosmology

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

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• 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

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