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Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 11

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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.

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.

Light, Self, Cosmos

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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

Analysis, Littles, Boring

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.476, Ballantine Books

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

Doe, Pseudoscience, Would Be

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.23, Ballantine Books

At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.

Home, Heart, Eye

Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.278, Simon and Schuster

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.

Thinking, Who We Are, Where We Came

Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.197, Penguin

It's sometimes easier to reject strong evidence than to admit that we've been wrong, this is information about ourselves worth having.

Strong, Self Worth, Information

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.315, Ballantine Books

I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

Encouragement, Children, Powerful

Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth... then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

Ocean, Perfect Days, Years

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

Risk, Inquiry, Elements

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.13, Ballantine Books

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.

Brain, Connections, Machines

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

Science is a way of thinking that helps you not to fool yourself.

Thinking, Way, Fool

Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

Nature, Children, Important

We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.

Real, Quality, Stories

Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

Past, Ideas, Mind

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

Passion, Sunset, Science

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.154, Ballantine Books

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

Love You, World, Want

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.48, Ballantine Books

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

Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.

Fun, Science, People

"The Burden of Skepticism". Book by Carl Sagan, 1987.

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

Nature, Passion, Heart

Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want . . . but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy . . . try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

Sex, Children, Real

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

Powerful, Science, Feel Good

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

Ideas, Lovely, Fundamentals

"Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 91, 1980.

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

Loyalty, Character, People

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.371, Ballantine Books

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Cosmos, Earth, Vastness

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.28, Ballantine Books

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

Love, Embarrassing Questions, Keys

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.297, Ballantine Books

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