Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 17

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• Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?

  Carl Sagan

  Intelligent, Night, Sky

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• There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design.

  Carl Sagan

  Design, Seems, Universe

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.75, Ballantine Books

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• Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

  Carl Sagan

  Lying, Flower, Book

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.306, Ballantine Books

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• We are all star stuff.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Stuff, All Stars

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• They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Views, Rigidity

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 184, 1980.

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• The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Winter, Science

  "A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 26, 1990.

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• 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

  Teacher, Book, Mind

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• You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals.

  Carl Sagan

  Dollars, Chemicals

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• It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.

  Carl Sagan

  Emotional, Courageous, Exploration

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.197, Penguin

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• I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I'd like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Thinking, People

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.55, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Science, Water

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

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• By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Bangs, Horizon

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.287, Ballantine Books

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• A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchisin g them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Mean, Survival

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• We are the custodians of life's meaning.

  Carl Sagan

  Custodians

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

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• If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone?

  Carl Sagan

  Tonight, Sun, Realizing

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• Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

  Carl Sagan

  Support, Library, Librarian

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.307, Ballantine Books

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• There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Earth Day, Tiny

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

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• We are made of starstuff.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Science, Made

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.62, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.

  Carl Sagan

  Cosmos, Machinery, Exquisite

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean". TV Series, 1990.

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• My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Two, Parent

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.13, Ballantine Books

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• There is every reason to think that in the coming years Mars and its mysteries will become increasingly familiar to the inhabitants of the Planet Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Years, Mars

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• Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Science, People

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.217, Ballantine Books

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• It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.

  Carl Sagan

  Years, May, Matter

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.98, Ballantine Books

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• What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.

  Carl Sagan

  Hands, Ideas, Two

  "The Burden of Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 12, Issue 1, www.csicop.org. Fall 1987.

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• In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called "Objections to Astrology" and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign, not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian.

  Carl Sagan

  Astrology, Atheism, Together

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.388, Ballantine Books

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