Carl Sagan Quotes

Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous.

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.

We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.

The passion to explore is at the heart of being human.

Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers.

We are all made up of star stuff.

Otherwise we don't run the government the government runs us

We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.

Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science-fiction ideas.

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?

We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration.

When permitted to listen to alternative opinions and engage in substantive debate, people have been known to change their minds. It can happen.

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have.

UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.

All inquires carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions.

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.

There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.

Any civilization that doesn't develop space travel dies.

I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer space.

The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

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

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.

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.

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.

On the day that we do discover that we are not alone, our society may begin to evolve and transform in some incredible and wondrous new ways.

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.

Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds

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.

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.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.

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

What an astonishing thing a book is.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse

For years I've been stressing with regard to UFOs that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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

Nobody listens to mathematicians.

I don?t feel rejected by the sky. I?m a part of it- tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity.

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

In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work.

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

Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

If you want to make a [rhubarb] pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe.

We are the children equally of the Sky and the Earth.