Carl Sagan Quotes

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.

A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

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

The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

But down deep, at the molecular heart of life we're essentially identical to trees.

The sacred truth of science is that there are no sacred truths.

The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.

My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.

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?

I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.

We are made of starstuff.

The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.

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.

It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.

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.

To read is to voyage through time.

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.

The open road still softly calls.

You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares.

At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.

Accommodation to change, the thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures are keys to the survival of civilization and perhaps of the human species.

Both the Freudian and the Platonic metaphors emphasize the considerable independence of and tension among the constituent parts of the psyche, a point that characterizes the human condition.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue.

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.

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

Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn't any good evidence.

Who will speak for Planet Earth?

We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.

There is a lurking fear that some things are not “meant" to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

Billions and billions.

The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.

Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it's an artefact from times long gone.

We are the universe experiencing itself.

The words "question" and "quest" are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.

Your god is too small for my universe.

We are a way of the universe knowing itself.

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo 's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.

Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what's true from what feels good.