Carl Sagan Quotes

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

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

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

An organism at war with itself is doomed.

In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

What's the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses.

One of the great commandments of science is: 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

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?

Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error. . . .

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

.. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'

Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation

A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.

It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.

In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.

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

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.

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?

My wonder button is being pushed all the time.

I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for the future, can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

To live in the hearts of others is to never die in those we leave behind.

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

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?

Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?

A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

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

Demon mean knowledge in Greek, especially about the material world. Science means knowledge in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further