Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 10

Quotes about:

• The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

  Carl Sagan

  Understanding, Cosmos, Joining

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.53, Ballantine Books

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• I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

  Carl Sagan

  Worship, Cosmology

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.48, Penguin

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• We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

  Carl Sagan

  Ocean, Self, Years

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", 1990.

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• The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Ignorance, Errors

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

  Carl Sagan

  Caring, Thinking, Wind

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series (Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory), 1990.

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• We are a way of the universe knowing itself.

  Carl Sagan

  Knowing, Way, Thrive

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• That kind of skeptical, questioning, "don't accept what authority tells you" attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

  Carl Sagan

  Attitude, Thinking, Democracies Have

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Merit, Different

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.12, Ballantine Books

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• Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

  Carl Sagan

  Mathematics, Certain, Pure

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

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• Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Overcoming, Tiny

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.73, Ballantine Books

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• The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

  Carl Sagan

  Travel, Stars, Distance

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.355, Ballantine Books

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• A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Views, World, Tiny

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.48, Penguin

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• People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Believe, Intelligent

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• Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Ideas, Balance

  "Why We Need To Understand Science" by Carl Sagan, The Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 14, Issue 3, www.csicop.org. Spring 1990.

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• Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Perception, Optical Illusions

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.43, Ballantine Books

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• A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

  Carl Sagan

  Morning, Sunrise, Dawn

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• Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Ignorance, Science

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

  Carl Sagan

  Encouragement, Children, Powerful

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• We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Pieces, Body

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• I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

  Carl Sagan

  Successful, Science, Doe

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

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• Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Icons, Wish

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.48, Penguin

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• In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

  Carl Sagan

  Time, Space, Joy

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.162, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

  Carl Sagan

  Past, Ideas, Mind

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• Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Self, Cosmos

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

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• It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

  Carl Sagan

  Passion, Sunset, Science

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.154, Ballantine Books

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