Quotes from Carl Sagan

Intuitive: The word conveys, I think, a diffuse annoyance at our inability to understand how we come by such knowledge.

In the littered field of discredited self-congratulatory chauvinisms, there is only one that seems to hold up, one sense in which we are special: Due to our own actions or inactions, and the misuse of our technology, we live at an extraordinary moment, for the Earth at least—the first time that a species has become able to wipe itself out.

The tar is an extremely rich collection of complex organic molecules, including the constituent parts of proteins and nucleic acids. The stuff of life, it turns out, can be very easily made.

The unprecedented powers that science now makes available must be accompanied by unprecedented levels of ethical focus and concern by the scientific community—as well as the most broadly based public education into the importance of science and democracy.

When I say I'm an agnostic, I only mean that the evidence isn't in. There isn't compelling evidence that God exists—at least your kind of god—and there isn't compelling evidence that he doesn't.

He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It's just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, our educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works.

cuando hierve el fanatismo a nuestro alrededor, los hábitos de pensamiento familiares de épocas antiguas toman el control.

What is there in the precepts of science that keeps a scientist from doing evil?

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure—in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.

No gastes neuronas en lo que no funciona.

It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe. I mean the real universe. All those light-years. All those worlds. I think of the scope of your universe, the opportunities it affords the Creator, and it takes my breath away.

Kita masih menyebut matahari TERBIT dan TENGGELAM. Sudah 2.200 tahun semenjak Aristarkhos tapi bahasa kita masih mengatakan seakan-akan bumi tidak berputar.

Isn't it confusing to have the same name as that scientist guy?" It took me a moment to understand. Was he pulling my leg? Finally, it dawned on me. "I am that scientist guy," I answered. He paused and then smiled. "Sorry. That's my problem. I thought it was yours too.

En lugar de reconocer que somos ignorantes en muchas áreas, hemos tendido a decir cosas como que el universo está impregnado de lo inefable. Se asigna la responsabilidad de lo que todavía no entendemos a un Dios de lo ignorado.

in a dream one must be allowed the liberty of imagining occasionally that which never existed in the world of sense perception.

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? For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.

So, I think the bureaucratic religions try to institutionalize your perception of the numinous instead of providing the means so you can perceive the numinous directly—like looking through a six-inch telescope. If sensing the numinous is at the heart of religion, who's more religious would you say—the people who follow the bureaucratic religions or the people who teach themselves science?

The percent likelihood of a society becoming physically violent if it is physically affectionate toward its infants and tolerant of premarital sexual behavior is 2 percent. The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 125,000 to one. I am not aware of any other developmental variable that has such a high degree of predictive validity. [James W. Prescott] p 274

el deterioro de sus cuerpos de que habla la segunda ley de la termodinámica

Maturity entails a readiness, painful and wrenching though it may be, to look squarely into the long dark places, into the fearsome shadows.

The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.

I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.