For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Thus the recent rapid evolution of human intelligence is not only the cause of but also the only conceivable solution to the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
When you buy a used car, you kick the tires, you look at the odometer, you open up the hood. If you… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television. — 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
Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down --… — 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
