The fossil record implies trial and error, the inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with a Great Designer (though not a… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Eratosthenes's only tools were sticks, eyes, feet, and brains; plus a zest for experiment. With those tools he correctly deduced the circumference… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Scientists make mistakes. Accordingly, it is the job of the scientist to recognize our weakness, to examine the widest range of opinions,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to… — 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
