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Atheist Quotes by Carl Sagan

38 Atheist quotes by Carl Sagan

All Atheist quotes Carl Sagan’s page

Carl Sagan points out that atheists claim they have evidence that no god exists, while agnostics wait for proof. He warns that strong emotions can trick us and urges teaching the scientific method. He also remarks that gods may be human dreams rather than reality.

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I don't want to believe. I want to know.

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Atheism is very stupid.

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An atheist has to know more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no God.

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If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate…Try science.

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It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

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Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

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“I've always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.”

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At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

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I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will…

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An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God.…

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Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the…

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You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human…

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

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We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain…

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The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they've made a…

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If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be…

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In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished…

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The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall…

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Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But…

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In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If…

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I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will…

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I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not…

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If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to…

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Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove…

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An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God.…

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Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural… In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills…

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Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important…

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(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the…

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“If we are to discuss the idea of God and be restricted to rational arguments, then it is probably useful to know…

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The Romans called the Christians atheists. Why? Well, the Christians had a god of sorts, but it wasn't a real god. They…

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“Now, it would be wholly foolish to deny the existence of laws of nature. And if that is what we are talking…

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We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what…

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An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By…

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It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of…

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You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need…

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If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?

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My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe…

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Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming…

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More by Carl Sagan

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it…

The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from…

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no…

“Telepathy’ literally means to feel at a distance, just as ‘telephone’ is to hear at a distance and ‘television’ is to see at a…

“On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump…

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies,…

In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams!

“[ When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996 :] If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion,…

Don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience.

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully…

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make…

A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this…

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.…

Every star may be a sun to someone.