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Carl Sagan Quotes

1934–1996 United States

United States
Academics
Activists
Agnostics
Astronomers

Also known as: Carl sagan, Dr. Carl Sagan, Sagan, Carl, The Demon-Haunted World

Random Carl Sagan quote

263 quotes

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.

Cosmos (1980)

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Cosmos (1980)

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

Cosmos (1980)

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Contact (1985)

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

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.

Cosmos (1980)

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

Cosmos (1980)

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

Cosmos (1980)

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Those who raise questions about the God hypothesis and the soul hypothesis are by no means all atheists.

Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006)

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

Cosmos (1980)

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Contact (1985)

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding.

Cosmos (1980)

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.

Cosmos (1980)

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The Dragons of Eden (1977)

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.

Contact (1985)

In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.

Broca's Brain (1979)

Every new set of discoveries raises a host of questions which we were never before wise enough even to ask.

Broca's Brain (1979)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Carl Sagan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.