Carl Sagan Quotes

Author Image

Carl Sagan

Profession : Scientist

Birth : November 9, 1934

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

Carl Sagan

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

Carl Sagan

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Carl Sagan

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Carl Sagan

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Carl Sagan

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Carl Sagan

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Carl Sagan

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

Carl Sagan

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.

Carl Sagan

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Carl Sagan

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

Carl Sagan

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.

Carl Sagan

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Carl Sagan

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

Carl Sagan

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Carl Sagan

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

Carl Sagan

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

Carl Sagan

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Carl Sagan