Quotes from Carl Sagan

When too much cynicism threatens to engulf us, it is buoying to remember how pervasive goodness is.

MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

El fanatismo, el temor, la esperanza, el ardiente debate, la oración callada, la generosidad ejemplar, la intolerancia estrecha de miras y la necesidad profunda de nuevas ideas, todo era como una epidemia que recorría febrilmente la superficie del minúsculo planeta Tierra.

A credulous mind Ã¢â'¬Â¦ finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer.

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

I have only one regret," he had said in his gravelly voice. "My daughter married a Bulgarian.

According to some estimates, almost half the scientists and high technologists on Earth are employed full- or part-time on military matters.

There is some evidence that dreaming is necessary. When people or other mammals are deprived of REM sleep (by awakening them as soon as the characteristic REM and EEG dream patterns emerge), the number of initiations of the dream state per night goes up, and, in severe cases, daytime hallucinations-that is, waking dreams-occur.

I have not the qualifications for teaching my philosophy of life. I have barely qualifications for practicing the philosophy I believe. I am but a poor struggling soul yearning to be Ã¢â'¬Â¦ wholly truthful and wholly nonviolent in thought, word and deed, but ever failing to reach the ideal.

This zest to explore and exploit, however thoughtless its agents may have been, has clear survival value. It is not restricted to any one nation or ethnic group. It is an endowment that all members of the human species hold in common.

It would seem that our intelligence is the source of our unhappiness in an almost literal way; but it would also imply that our unhappiness is the source of our strength as a species.

Vast migrations of people -some voluntary, most not- have shaped the human condition. More of us flee from war, oppression and famine today than at any other time in human history.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps. Should I do something with this?

There is another connection between infancy and dreams: both are followed by amnesia. When we emerge from either state, we have great difficulty remembering what we have experienced. In both cases, I would suggest, the left hemisphere of the neocortex, which is responsible for analytic recollection, has been functioning ineffectively.

what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

Tides of people will continue to ebb and flow across the planet. But the lands we run to now have already been settled. Other people, often unsympathetic to our plight, are there before us.

Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations.

One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." (

Our probable ancestors, Homo erectus and Homo habilis -now extinct- are classified as of the same genus (Homo) but of different species, although no one (at least lately) has attempted the appropriate experiments to see if crosses of them with us would produce fertile offspring.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. What

Somewhere else there might be very exotic biologies and technologies and societies. In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding, we are a little lonely; and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the search for a generally acceptable cosmic context for the human species. In the deepest sense, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Einstein had been fascinated by Bernstein's People's Book of Natural Science, a popularization of science that described on its very first page the astonishing speed of electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look like if you could travel on a wave of light. To travel at the speed of light? What an engaging and magical thought for a boy on the road in a countryside dappled and rippling in sunlight.