Carl Sagan Quotes

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are theemotional hallmarks of our species

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

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library

We are all star stuff.

The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little goodevidence.

Neuroanatomy, political history, and introspection all offer evidence that human beings are quite capable of resisting the urge to surrender to every impulse of reptilian core of brain.

Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.[Dedication to Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan, in Cosmos]

Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it's an artefact from times long gone.

Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

Meanwhile the Cosmos is rich beyond measure: the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Everything not forbidden by the laws of nature, he assured her - quoting a colleague down the hall - is mandatory.

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.

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

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

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

Something very strange is going on in the depths of space.

Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.

The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.

All science asks is to employ the same levels of skepticism we use in buying a used car or in judging the quality of analgesics or beer from their television commercials.

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.

And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.

Birds know, better than humans, not to spoil the nest.

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.

[an encounter in space] "Some celestial event. No--no words--no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful...I had no idea. I had no idea.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.

Might it be possible at some future time, when neurophysiology has advanced substantially, to reconstruct the memories or insight of someone long dead?...It would be the ultimate breach of privacy.

Black holes collect problems faster than they collect matter.

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?

We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.