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Carl Sagan Quotes about Science

All Carl Sagan 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 quotes Science And Technology Spirituality Spring Stupidity Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Truth Understanding Universe Vision Waiting War Water Weakness Winter Writing

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Taken, Science, Long

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.314, Ballantine Books

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

Science, Prejudice, Vastness

"Wonder and Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer 19 (1), www.csicop.org. January/February 1995.

Our passion for learning ... is our tool for survival.

Passion, Learning, Science

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

Science, Ideas, Argument

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

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.

Science, Technology, Information Society

"Bringing Science Back to Earth". Interview with Anne Kalosh, Hemispheres (the magazine of United Airlines), October 1994.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Knowledge, Science, Thinking

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.15, Ballantine Books

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Atheist, Science, Ideas

"Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 14, p. 244, 1985.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

Science, Civilization

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Science, Doe, Spirituality

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.54, Ballantine Books

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

Science, Thinking, Understanding

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.234, Ballantine Books

Science is a way to not fool ourselves.

Science, Way, Fool

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Atheist, Mean, Science

Carl Sagan (1979). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”, Random House Inc

National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

Religious, Stars, Science

"Cosmos". p. 318. Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

[Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

Science, Self, Two

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.362, Ballantine Books

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

Attitude, Heart, Science

"The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Ch. 17 : The Marriage of Skepticism and Wonder. Book by Carl Sagan, 1995.

Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other, that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable. What is necessary is to reduce the matches and to clean up the gasoline.

Science, Two, Enemy

During a panel discussion in ABC News Viewpoint following the TV movie "The Day After", November 20, 1983.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

Science, Together, Atoms

"The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God". Book by Carl Sagan, 2006.

Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

Children, Kids, Science

Psychology Today Interview, www.psychologytoday.com. January 1, 1996.

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close.

Science, Thinking, People

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.55, Ballantine Books

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Ambition, Science, Perfect

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.230, Ballantine Books

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

Science, Acceptance, Ideas

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.391, Ballantine Books

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

Dark, Science, Perfect

"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

Atheist, War, Science

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.31, Ballantine Books

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

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