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Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 10

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What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

Caring, Thinking, Wind

"Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series (Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory), 1990.

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

Understanding, Cosmos, Joining

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.53, Ballantine Books

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.

Mistake, Ignorance, Errors

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

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

Ideas, Merit, Different

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.12, Ballantine Books

We are a way of the universe knowing itself.

Knowing, Way, Thrive

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

Space, Overcoming, Tiny

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.73, Ballantine Books

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

Travel, Stars, Distance

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

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

Stupid, Believe, Intelligent

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

Mathematics, Certain, Pure

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.51, Ballantine Books

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

Inspirational, Educational, Knowledge

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

Morning, Sunrise, Dawn

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

Stupid, Ignorance, Science

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

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

Successful, Science, Doe

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.429, Ballantine Books

The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.

Animal, Culture, Tools

We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.

Running, Kings, Volcanoes

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.65, Ballantine Books

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.

Ideas, Icons, Wish

Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.48, Penguin

Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

Errors, Perception, Optical Illusions

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.43, Ballantine Books

There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.

Science, Interesting, Imperfection

There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order.

Responsibility, Thinking, Animal

There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.

Pain, Wonder, Injury

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

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Stars, Believe, Thinking

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.32, Ballantine Books

We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.

Stars, Pieces, Body

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

Self Esteem, Past, Challenges

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

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

Time, Space, Joy

Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.162, Univ. Press of Mississippi

There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity

Philosophical, Perspective, Humanity

Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

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