Quotes from Carl Sagan

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope.

Thomas Jefferson taught that a democracy was impractical unless the people were educated.

The Greek religion explained that diffuse band of light in the night sky as the milk of Hera, squirted from her breast across the heavens, a legend that is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use—the Milky Way.

we have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.

It was difficult to hold Broca's brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there—his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments.

On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.

The sword of science is double-edged. Its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility – more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive.

I wonder how many potential Einsteins have been permanently discouraged through competitive examinations and the forced feeding of curricula.

I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations.

The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that newborn bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar);

The tragedy of the human species is it has evolved the capacity of foresight, but refuses to use it.

Sometimes she would be engaged in a laboratory exercise or a seminar when the instructor would say, Gentlemen, let's proceed, and sensing Ellie's frown would add, Sorry, Miss Arroway, but I think of you as one of the boys. The highest compliment they were capable of paying was that in their minds she was not overtly female.

Cuando hablamos de la ira del cielo, la agitación del mar, la resistencia de los diamantes a ser tallados, la atracción que ejerce la Tierra sobre un asteroide cercano o la excitación de un átomo, de nuevo pensamos en una especie de visión animista del mundo. Estamos atribuyendo existencia real a objetos inertes. Algún nivel primitivo de nuestro pensamiento dota a la Naturaleza inanimada de vida, pasiones y premeditación.

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the known world comprised

the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning.

Killing an enemy with teeth and bare hands is emotionally far more demanding than pulling a trigger or pressing a button. In inventing tools and weapons, in contriving civilization, we have disinhibited the controls - sometimes thoughtlessly and inadvertently, but sometimes with cool premeditation. If the beasts who are our nearest relatives engaged recklessly in … mass murder they would have rendered themselves extinct. If our non-human ancestors did it, we would not be here.

The secrets of evolution are death and time—the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.

Now, it would be wholly foolish to deny the existence of laws of nature. And if that is what we are talking about when we say God, then no one can possibly be an atheist, or at least anyone who would profess atheism would have to give a coherent argument about why the laws of nature are inapplicable. I think he or she would be hard-pressed. So with this latter definition of God, we all believe in God.

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we're talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality.

She had spent her career attempting to make contact with the most remote and alien of strangers, while in her own life she had made contact with hardly anyone at all.

We sometimes hear of things that can travel faster than light. Something called 'the speed of thought' is occasionally proffered. This is an exceptionally silly notion especially since the speed of impulses through the neutrons in our brain is about the same as the speed of a donkey cart.

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling. HENRI POINCARÉ (1854–1912)