Quotes from Carl Sagan

there is no deeper religious feeling than the feeling for the natural world. I wouldn't separate the world of nature from the religious instinct...I would not even object to saying that the sense of awe before the grandeur of nature is itself a religious experience.

In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work.

You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species... - with us excitedly chattering, The Universe is created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to us! - and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.

Likewise, if we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.

I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth Ã¢â'¬Â¦

almost every species that has ever existed is extinct; extinction is the rule, survival is the exception.

There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars.

If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.

Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.

the future belongs to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.

I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgements.

When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules.

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief and sedentary hiatus we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds though through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.

The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.

Across the sea of space. The stars are other suns. We have traveled this way before. And there is much to be learned.

If the Earth were as old as a person, a typical organism would be born, live and die in a sliver of a second. We are fleeting, transitional creatures, snowflakes fallen on the hearth fire.

These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question—the search for who we are.

I think I'm able to explain things because understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the most brilliant students were able to see instantly I had to work to understand. I can remember what I had to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones figure it out so fast they never see the mechanics of understanding.

There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.