Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 20

All Quotes Acceptance Age Art Astronomy Atheism Atheist Authority Awareness Balance Belief Challenges Character Childhood Children Church Community Compassion Consciousness Creation Criticism Culture Curiosity Darkness Death Doubt Earth Education Enthusiasm Evidence Evolution Giving God Greek Heart History Home Humanity Humility Ignorance Imagination Injury Inspirational Judging Knowledge Learning Life Lifetime Love Loyalty Lying Magic Mathematics Memories Moon Morning Motivation Motivational Nature Observation Opportunity Pain Passion Past Perspective Philosophy Physics Prejudice Purpose Reading Reality Rejection Religion Responsibility Risk Romance Running Science Science And Technology Spirituality Spring Stupidity Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Truth Understanding Universe Vision Waiting War Water Weakness Winter Writing

If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our

If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our survival.

Cat, Survival, Tools

We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

Stars, Spring, Long

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

Religious, Time, Long

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.194, Ballantine Books

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.

Law, Patterns, Things Change

These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -- wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P. T. Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every minute.' But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic -- however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney.

Powerful, Grief, Acceptance

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.209, Ballantine Books

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

Dinosaurs, Sagan, Observation

I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.

Hatred, Vision, Earth

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.199, Ballantine Books

We are...capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.

Meaningful, Stars, Compassion

The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

Thinking, Errors, Light

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.293, Ballantine Books

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

Men, Cosmos, Matter

Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.... In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa.... The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly.

Atheist, War, Numbers

The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.

Art, Thinking, Political

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.398, Ballantine Books

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience..... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Responsibility, Home, Character

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

Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen; the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome.

Sweet, Truth, Light

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, p.407, Ballantine Books

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

Ideas, Generations, Fiction

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.172, Ballantine Books

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.

Moments, Our Relationship, Share

If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?

Atheist, Childhood, Religion

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.149, Ballantine Books

What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding we are a little lonely, and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet, the Earth.... In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Lonely, Blue, Civilization

These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.

Home, Land, Earth

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.17, Ballantine Books

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

Discovery, Innovation, Age

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.186, Ballantine Books

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

Stars, Night, Class

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.414, Ballantine Books

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

Science, Perfect, Instruments

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

I believe that even a smattering of such findings in modern science and mathematics is far more compelling and exciting than most of the doctrines of pseudoscience, whose practitioners were condemned as early as the fifth century B.C. by the Ionian philosopher Heraclitus as “nigh -walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus, priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.” But science is more intricate and subtle, reveals a much richer imiverse, and powerfully evokes our sense of wonder.

Wine, Science, Night

"Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science".

Because men, compared to male chimps, have such relatively small testicles (large testicles indicate a species where many males mate, one after the other, with the same female), we might guess that promiscuous societies were uncommon in the immediate human past.

Past, Men, Males

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

Guarantees That, Risk, Elements

Carl Sagan, Jerald F. TerHorst, Allan J. Mayer, Sharon S. McKern, Laurence J. Peter (1980). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”

You May Also Like: