Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 16

Quotes about:

• The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

  Carl Sagan

  Ocean, Sea, Water

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.26, Ballantine Books

  10 Copy quote

• If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our survival.

  Carl Sagan

  Cat, Survival, Tools

  14 Copy quote

• The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.

  Carl Sagan

  Artist, Understanding, Sometimes

  "Mr. X". Essay by Carl Sagan, hermiene.net. 1969.

  7 Copy quote

• I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars.... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Stars, Book

  4 Copy quote

• We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy.

  Carl Sagan

  Military, Common Humanity, Decision

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.178, Ballantine Books

  9 Copy quote

• Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science-fiction ideas.

  Carl Sagan

  Ideas, Generations, Fiction

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.172, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Education, School, Learning

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.46, Ballantine Books

  66 Copy quote

• Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hero, Long

  4 Copy quote

• We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.

  Carl Sagan

  Understanding, World, Daily Life

  "A Brief History of Time". Book by Stephen Hawking, Introduction, 1988.

  4 Copy quote

• The open road still softly calls.

  Carl Sagan

  Stills, Sedentary, Open Road

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.15, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

• The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspiration, Doubt, Mind

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.61, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

• The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Zeitgeist, Appeals

  "Cosmos/ Who Speaks for Earth?". Documentary, 1980.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Distance, Ignorance

  "Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence".

  7 Copy quote

• I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Science, Discovery

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

  Carl Sagan

  Beautiful, Moving, Fire

  Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan (1999). “Carl Sagan: a life”, John Wiley & Sons

  15 Copy quote

• Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.

  Carl Sagan

  Cutting, Two, Evil

  7 Copy quote

• We are all made up of star stuff.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Stuff, Made

  4 Copy quote

• I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Believe, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.245, Ballantine Books

  66 Copy quote

• The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Believe, People

  21 Copy quote

• A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Dust, May

  Cosmos ch. 1 (1980). Sagan denied using the phrase "billions and billions," as caricatured by comedian Johnny Carson, but the above quote approaches that phrase, and Sagan was extremely fond in his writing of the word billion or billions.

  10 Copy quote

• When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

  Carl Sagan

  Integrity, Heart, Science

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 3: "The Harmony of the Worlds", 1990.

  52 Copy quote

• I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

  Carl Sagan

  Zoos, Thinking, People

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.55, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” 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.

  Carl Sagan

  God, Science, Religion

  "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". Book by Carl Sagan, 1994.

  10 Copy quote

• We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.

  Carl Sagan

  Taken, Hands, Firsts

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.47, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

Page 16 of 24

First

← Prev

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin