“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“To make a contented slave,’ [Frederick] Bailey later wrote, ‘it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Part of the success of the tobacco industry in purveying this brew of addictive poisons can be attributed to widespread unfamiliarity with… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Telepathy’ literally means to feel at a distance, just as ‘telephone’ is to hear at a distance and ‘television’ is to see at a… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“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… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams! — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“[ When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996 :] If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
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… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
