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 22

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

Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year

Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

Average, Years, Atmosphere

The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based.

Men, Thinking, Wind

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.67, Ballantine Books

A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.

Home, Responsibility, Our World

"Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 6: "Traveller's Tales", 1990.

Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.

Revenge, Military, War

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

War, Thinking, Nuclear

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.349, Ballantine Books

Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?

Children, Cutting, Winter

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.400, Ballantine Books

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.

Stars, Distance, Mean

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.31, Ballantine Books

The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

Science, Numbers, Long

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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

Inquiry, Scientist, Obliged

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.14, Ballantine Books

Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

Self, Numbers, Depth

Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.151, Simon and Schuster

Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

Keys, Experiments

"Wonder and Skepticism" by Carl Sagan, www.csicop.org. January-February 1995.

[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

Science, Data, Ideas

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more do you want?" We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.

Successful, Science, Moon

What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque

Mean, Technology, Years

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.337, Ballantine Books

He sought a way to preserve the past. John Hershel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel.... a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it... photography. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. This man is staring at us from across the centuries, a ghost preserved by light.

Photography, Memories, Mean

Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

Exercise, Technology, Wish

Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.245, Ballantine Books

We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true and the beautiful. But it would be a great mistake to ignore where we have come from in our attempt to determine where we are going.

Beautiful, Mistake, Humanity

Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.6, Cambridge University Press

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

Running, Civilization, Long

"Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

If we teach only the findings and products of science - no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be - without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

Pain, Average, Pseudoscience

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.44, Ballantine Books

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.

Opportunity, Other Worlds, Waiting

Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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.

Thinking, Years, Wilderness

Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.

Moon, Space, Civilization

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

Science, Fiction, Advantage

Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.47, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

Morning, Sunset, Moon

Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

Dream, Television, Vastness

"Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

You May Also Like: