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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

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.

The Burden of Skepticism (1987)

Nearly all our problems are made by humans and can be solved by humans. No social convention, no political system, no economic hypothesis, no religious dogma is more important.

Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1997)

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

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

Note that in all this interaction between mutation and natural selection, no moth is making a conscious effort to adapt to a changed environment. The process is random and statistical.

The Dragons of Eden (1977)

A mutation in a DNA molecule within a chromosome of a skin cell in my index finger has no influence on heredity. Fingers are not involved, at least directly, in the propagation of the species.

The Dragons of Eden (1977)

Many harebrained interpretations were also widely available, especially in weekly newspapers.

Contact (1985)

We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive.

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

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

Contact (1985)

If a marker were to be erected today, it might read, in homage to his scientific courage: “He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.”

Cosmos (1980)

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.

Broca's Brain (1979)

The chiliasts made an atheist out of me.

Contact (1985)

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Cosmos (1980)

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.

Essay as "Mr. X (1969)

And chicken soup is widely known to be good for life.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Broca was quoted as saying, “I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”

Broca's Brain (1979)

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions, atheism is very stupid.

Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006)

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

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

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.

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

R is very large for LSD (which I've never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis.

Essay as "Mr. X (1969)

Attribution

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