One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Criticism
If the dinosaurs had had a space program, they would not be extinct.
—Carl Sagan
The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on its divine inspiration.
—Carl Sagan
Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend time wondering why nature is the way it is.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Nature
Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: The Universe
You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken’, and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Arguments
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Curiosity
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. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Illusion
A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Reading
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Technology
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Science
Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish.
It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Space
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Science, Universe, One liners, Mystery, Curiosity
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Science, Thinking, Knowledge
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Evolution
Books tap the wisdom of our species—the greatest minds, the best teachers—from all over the world and from all our history. And they’re patient.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Books
the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Intelligence, Understanding
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Creation, Perspective, Create, Universe
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Medicine
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Religion
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: The Artist
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us – and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Truth
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Ambition
Imagine that I am riding a bicycle toward you. As I approach an intersection I nearly collide, so it seems to me, with a horsedrawn cart. I swerve and barely avoid being run over. Now think of the event again, and imagine that the cart and the bicycle are both traveling close to the speed of light. If you are standing down the road, the cart is traveling at right angles to your light of sight. You see me, by reflected sunlight, traveling toward you. Would not my speed be added to the speed of light so that my image would get to you considerably before the image of the cart? Should you not see me swerve before you see the cart arrive? Can the cart and I approach the intersection simultaneously from my point of view, but not from yours? Could I experience a near collision with the cart while you perhaps see me swerve around nothing and pedal cheerfully on toward the town of Vinci? These are curious and subtle questions. They challenge the obvious. There is a reason that no one thought of them before Einstein. From such elementary questions, Einstein produced a fundamental rethinking of the world, a revolution in physics.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Time
Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Judgement, Intelligence
I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Superstition
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Philosophy
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Absence
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.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy
Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.
—Carl Sagan
Topics: Humility
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Galileo Galilei Italian Astronomer
- Stephen Jay Gould American Paleontologist
- Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
- Kurt Vonnegut American Novelist
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
- E. O. Wilson American Sociobiologist
- Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
- Arthur Rubinstein American Pianist
- Isaac Asimov American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
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