Carl Sagan Quotes

American astrophysicist, cosmologist and author (1934–1996)

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Carl Edward Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect will change the earth's climate system.

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Native Name: Carl Edward Sagan

Alternative Names: Sagan • Carl E. Sagan • Carl E Sagan • C. E. Sagan • C.E. Sagan • C E Sagan • C. Sagan • C Sagan • Sagan C • Sagan C. • Sagan C. E. • Sagan CE

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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.

The level of public education in science and technology is an important sign of the national scientific accomplishment. It is a matter of overall importance in economic development, scientific advance, and the progress of society.

Our individual growth represents the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

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.

Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.

Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the
emotional hallmarks of our species

We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path what will take us to the stars - unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first.

Would not a rational society spend more on understanding and preventing, than on preparing for, the next war?

[A]s children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror … LUCRETIUS,
On the Nature of Things
(ca. 60 B.C.)

There is the possibility for religion and science to forge a potent partnership against pseudo-science.

If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on. But there's one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable. The poor graduate student at his or her Ph.D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous; this from the professors who have the candidate's future in their grasp. The students naturally are nervous; who wouldn't be? True, they've prepared for it for years. But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions; they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I'm not prepared, I'm in deep trouble."

I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... and the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light. The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

Do Buddhists believe in God, or not?” Ellie asked on their way to have dinner with the Abbot. “Their position seems to be,” Vaygay replied dryly, “that their God is so great he doesn’t even have to exist.” As

«زعم وانج هونجشينج أحد هواة الكيمياء، أنه قام بتخليق سائل إذا ما أضيفت مقادير قليلة منه إلى الماء، تحول إلى جازولين أو ما يعادله. وظل لفترة، يتلقى التمويل من الجيش والشرطة السرية، ولكن حين اتضح أن اختراعه محض خداع، أُلقي القبض عليه وأودع السجن»

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