Quotes About Carl Sagan

A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world.

It is a characteristic conceit of our species to put human face on random cosmic violence.

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

In that case, on behalf of Earthlife, I urge that, with full knowledge of our limitations, we vastly increase our knowledge of the Solar System and then begin to settle other worlds.

Everything not forbidden by the laws of nature, he assured her - quoting a colleague down the hall - is mandatory.

The others would then fall silent and she would continue about doped gallium arsenide detectors, or the ethanol content of the galactic cloud W-3. The quantity of 200-proof alcohol in this single interstellar cloud was more than enough to maintain the present population of the Earth, if every adult were a dedicated alcoholic, for the age of the solar system. The tamada had appreciated the remark.

Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body's warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.

Apart from a thin film of life at the very surface of the Earth, an occasional intrepid spacecraft, and some radio static, our impact on the Universe is nil. It knows nothing of us.

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope.

It was difficult to hold Broca's brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there—his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments.

I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.

It is interesting that it is not the getting of any sort of knowledge that God has forbidden, but, specifically, the knowledge of the difference between good and evil-that is, abstract and moral judgments, which, if they reside anywhere, reside in the neocortex.

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.

Demon" means "knowledge" in Greek. "Science" means "knowledge" in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.

The key point of the Tunguska Event is that there was a tremendous explosion, a great shock wave, an enormous forest fire, and yet there is no impact crater at the site. There seems to be only one explanation consistent with all the facts: In 1908 a piece of a comet hit the Earth.

Observation: there was absolutely nothing to see on Venus. Conclusion: it must be covered with life.

Perhaps for the first time in any medium, the person teaching you science—Carl Sagan—cared about the tangled mental roadways that can rob a person of rational thought.

Do you believe in UFOs?' I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not of evidence. I'm almost never asked, 'How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?

President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);

If anything like this is true, then we would be denied even our self-congratulatory distinction of being the only animal that makes self-congratulatory distinctions.

A cover-up to keep knowledge of extraterrestrial life or alien abductions almost wholly secret for 45 years, with hundreds if not thousands of government employees privy to it, is a remarkable notion.

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.