Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 7

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• There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Wonder, Injury

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.89, Ballantine Books

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• We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?

  Carl Sagan

  Nuclear, Earth, Speak

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.357, Ballantine Books

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• 'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

  Carl Sagan

  Truth, Book, Opportunity

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

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• The Big Bang is our modern scientific creation myth. It comes from the same human need to solve the cosmological riddle [Where did the universe come from?]

  Carl Sagan

  Bangs, Needs, Creation

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• The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Sky, One Day

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 7: "The Backbone of Night", 1990.

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• We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.

  Carl Sagan

  Rocks, Humanity, World

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• In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question everything and to give a fair hearing to everything?

  Carl Sagan

  Giving, Hearing, Willing

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.195, Penguin

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• If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

  Carl Sagan

  Doe, Atoms, Matter

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.108, Penguin

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• Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Skins, Dozen

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, p.30, Ballantine Books

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• But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

  Carl Sagan

  Able, Imagine, Subtle

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.422, Ballantine Books

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• A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.

  Carl Sagan

  Lonely, War, Ocean

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?", 1990.

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• When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Educational, Knowledge

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• The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Science, Understanding

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

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• There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Years, Forever

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

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• Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Humble, Long Ago

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.104, Ballantine Books

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• The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Rocks, Apollo

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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• That kind of skeptical, questioning, "don't accept what authority tells you" attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

  Carl Sagan

  Attitude, Thinking, Democracies Have

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design.

  Carl Sagan

  Design, Seems, Universe

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.75, Ballantine Books

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• There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

  Carl Sagan

  Truth, Self, Aperture

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• At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

  Carl Sagan

  Attitude, Heart, Science

  "The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Ch. 17 : The Marriage of Skepticism and Wonder. Book by Carl Sagan, 1995.

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• There is never only ONE of anything in nature.

  Carl Sagan

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• The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.

  Carl Sagan

  Brain, Connections, Machines

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 278, 1980.

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• It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us - but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Weakness, Thrive

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.355, Ballantine Books

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• We are one species. We are starstuff.

  Carl Sagan

  Vastness, Species, Universe

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• The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Ignorance, Errors

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

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