Quotes from Carl Sagan

I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution.

We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings.

Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

The sacred truth of science is that there are no sacred truths.

The words "question" and "quest" are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question everything and to give a fair hearing to everything?

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.