Quotes from Carl Sagan

It is on this world that we developed our passion for exploring the Cosmos, and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny.

the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.

We live in a complex age where many of the problems we face can, whatever their origins, only have solutions that involve a deep understanding of science and technology.

Voyages to the outer solar system are controlled from a single place on the planet Earth, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California.

We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy.

Si uno está muerto, no puede hacer nada para ser feliz.

Nuestro planeta y nuestro sistema solar se hallan rodeados por un nuevo mundo oceánico, las profundidades del espacio. Y no es más infranqueable que el de otras épocas. Quizá todavía es pronto. Puede que no haya llegado el momento. Pero esos otros mundos, que prometen indecibles oportunidades, nos hacen señas.

Equally, where the technological application of scientific discoveries is clear and obvious—as when a scientist works on nerve gases—he cannot properly claim that such applications are "none of his business," merely on the ground that it is the military forces, not scientists, who use the gases to disable or kill. This is even more obvious when the scientist deliberately offers help to governments, in exchange for funds.

A stars rich in europium; of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique. It amazes me still. Auguste Comte picked a particularly unfortunate example.

I do not imagine that many people in the fifteenth century ever wondered if they were living in the Italian Renaissance.

A radio telescope works more like a light meter than a camera. You point it toward some fairly broad region of the sky, and it records how much energy, in a particular radio frequency, is coming down to Earth.

Would not a rational society spend more on understanding and preventing, than on preparing for, the next war?

A handful of sand contains about 10,000 grains, more than the number of stars we can see with the naked eye on a clear night. But the number of stars we can see is only the tiniest fraction of the number of stars that are. What we see at night is the merest smattering of the nearest stars. 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.

Es peligroso y temerario que el ciudadano medio mantenga su ignorancia sobre el calentamiento global, la reducción del ozono, la contaminación del aire, los residuos tóxicos y radiactivos, la lluvia ácida, la erosión del suelo, la deforestación tropical, el crecimiento exponencial de la población.

Venus, it turns out, is broiling hot. There are no swamps, no oil fields, no seltzer oceans. With insufficient data, it is easy to go wrong.

I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. Can we not make the transition from automated aerospace killing to automated aerospace exploration of the solar system in which we live?

we still talk about the Sun "rising" and the Sun "setting." It is 2,200 years since Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn. The

They will manage to cross the ocean of becoming.

Especially where the implications of what we think we are seeing seem to be profound, we may not exercise adequate self-discipline and self-criticism.

Christiaan Huygens became simultaneously adept in languages, drawing, law, science, engineering, mathematics and music. His interests and allegiances were broad. "The world is my country," he said, "science my religion.

It's hard to imagine an American sports team named the Diarrheas ("Gimme a 'D' …").

Cuando la gravedad es lo bastante elevada no deja escapar nada, ni siquiera la luz. Un lugar así recibe el nombre de agujero negro. Es una especie de gato cósmico de Chesire, enigmáticamente indiferente a lo que le rodea.

Apart from the social insects, no other species has been clever enough to invent war It is an institution optimally configured to benefit the alphas

When all is said and done, the invention of writing must be reckoned not only as a brilliant innovation but as a surpassing good for humanity. And assuming that we survive long enough to use their inventions wisely, I believe the same will be said of the modern Thoths and Prometheuses who are today devising computers and programs at the edge of machine intelligence.