Carl Sagan Quotes About Evidence

Quotes about: Evidence

Acceptance Age Agnosticism Aliens Animals Arguing Art

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.

Carl Sagan

Taken, Science, Long

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.314, Ballantine Books
You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

Carl Sagan

Death, Faith, Atheist
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Carl Sagan

Absence, Evidence
In science it often happens that scientists say, '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 as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

Carl Sagan

Change, Learning, Humility

Keynote address at CSICOP conference in 1987. "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?" Book by Judson Poling, p. 30, 2003.
What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

Believe, Two, Sound

"Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1980.
My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.

Carl Sagan

Believe, Views, Agnostic
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

Carl Sagan

Atheist, Inspire, Doubt

"Conversations with Carl Sagan". Book edited by Tom Head, p. 70, 2006.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence

Carl Sagan

Demand, Claims, Evidence
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

Carl Sagan

Atheist, Doe, Certain

Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.70, Univ. Press of Mississippi
I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

Believe, Science, Claims

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.73, Ballantine Books
The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.

Carl Sagan

Law, Atheism, Doe

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books
I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?

Carl Sagan

Christian, Wise, Atheist
If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

Carl Sagan

Atheist, Real, Data

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.263, Ballantine Books
The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty.

Carl Sagan

Honesty, Ideas, Democracy
After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"

Carl Sagan

Believe, Giving, Suggestions

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.82, Ballantine Books
Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn't any good evidence.

Carl Sagan

Life, Sullen, Grumpy
For years I've been stressing with regard to UFOs that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

Stress, Years, Atheism

Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.46, Ballantine Books
It seems madness to say, 'We're worried that they're going to become addicted to marijuana' -- there's no evidence whatever that it's an addictive drug, but even if it were, these people are dying, what are we saving them from?

Carl Sagan

Marijuana, People, Drug
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.

Carl Sagan

Doe, Pseudoscience, Would Be

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.23, Ballantine Books
Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.

Carl Sagan

Observation, Evidence, Extraordinary
In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.

Carl Sagan

Religious, College, Thinking

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.98, Ballantine Books
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

Carl Sagan

Change, Science, Theoretical Physics

Keynote address at CSICOP conference, 1987.
For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

Civilization, Ideas, Tuesday

"Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1980.
It's sometimes easier to reject strong evidence than to admit that we've been wrong, this is information about ourselves worth having.

Carl Sagan

Strong, Self Worth, Information

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

Carl Sagan

Brain, Connections, Machines

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

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Born: November 9, 1934
Died: December 20, 1996
Occupation: Astronomer
Cite this Page: Citation

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