Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Quotes
402 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
We can make a similar examination, but with greater uncertainty, of the extraterrestrial hypothesis that holds that a wide range of UFOs viewed on the planet Earth are space vehicles from planets of other stars.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Something dreadful happens to students between first and twelfth grades, and it's not just puberty.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
If I were to propose to you that my arm could be in this position or in that position but it would be forbidden by the laws of nature to be in some intermediate position, that would likely strike you as absurd, as contrary to experience. And yet on the subatomic level, there is a quantization of energy and position and momentum. The reason that it seems counterintuitive is that is that we are not ordinarily down at the level of the very small, where quantum effects dominate.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
It is too late to be shy and hesitant. We have announced our presence to the cosmos — in a backward and groping and unrepresentative manner, to be sure — but here we are!
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
The price we pay for anticipation of the future is anxiety about it
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
Black holes may be apertures to elsewhen. Were we to plunge down a black hole, we would re-emerge, it is conjectured, in a different part of the universe and in another epoch of time.... Black holes may be the entrances to Wonderland. But are there Alices or white rabbits?
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology — but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species...
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
There is a place with four suns in the sky — red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth — and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
The words question and quest are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.
Carl Sagan
Source
Report...
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
Carl Sagan
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
...
17
Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Carl Sagan
Born:
November 9, 1934
Died:
December 20, 1996
(aged 62)
Bio:
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer and popular science writer.
Known for:
Cosmos (1980)
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)
Contact (1985)
Most used words:
science
universe
earth
god
time
human
life
stars
species
cosmos
people
years
planet
billion
matter
Carl Sagan on Wikipedia
Carl Sagan works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Carl Sagan Quotes
Carl Sagan Short Quotes
Quotes about Carl Sagan
American Cosmologist Quotes
Cosmologist Quotes
20th-century Cosmologist Quotes
Related People
Neil deGrasse Tyson
American Physicist
Stephen Hawking
British Cosmologist
Bill Nye
American Mechanical engineer
Richard Feynman
American Physicist
Family
Ann Druyan
Spouse
Lynn Margulis
Spouse
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes