Quotes from Carl Sagan

Perhaps the locale of the subjunctive mood will one day be found. Will Latins turn out to be extravagantly endowed and English-speaking peoples significantly short-changed in this minor piece of brain anatomy?

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based – or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug – it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

Something dreadful happens to students between first and twelfth grades, and it's not just puberty.

In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.

It almost never feels like prejudice. Instead, it feels fitting and just - the idea that, because of an accident of birth, 'our' group (whichever one it is) should have a central position in the social universe.

and this second kind of god they called God in a very straightforward way…but by God, they meant something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is, gravitation plus quantum mechanics plus grand unified field theories….equaled God. And by that all they meant were a set of exquisitely powerful physical principles that seemed to explain a great deal that was otherwise inexplicable about the universe.

To read is to voyage through time.

One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.

We are like butterflies, who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.

From this distant vantage point, the meat planet might not seem of any particular interest: an obscure and solitary lump, suspended in a sunbeam.

Could we possible manage the next phase of human history without first dealing with this penchant for dehumanizing the adversary?

Neuroanatomy, political history, and introspection all offer evidence that human beings are quite capable of resisting the urge to surrender to every impulse of reptilian core of brain.

Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Absence Of Evidence Is Not Evidence Of Absence

Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, "I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you

The entire evolutionary record on our planet, particularly the record contained in fossil endocasts, illustrates a progressive tendency toward intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about this: smart organisms by and large survive better and leave more offspring than stupid ones.

La escritura es quizás la mayor invención humana. Une a gente que nunca se conoció. Ciudadanos de épocas distantes. Los libros rompen las cadenas del tiempo. Un libro es la prueba de que los humanos son capaces de hacer magia

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. … We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God... Geometry provided God with a model for the creatin... Geometry is God Himself. Johannes Kepler

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return.

A vida é apenas uma visão momentânea das maravilhas deste assombroso universo, e é triste que tantos se desgastem sonhando com fantasias espirituais.