The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre… — 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, and… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
You mean am I for it or against it? You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“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
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
[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The Hindu religion is the only of the World's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis-which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism-especially rejection of new… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“the future belongs to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.” — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science-fiction ideas. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“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
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
![“[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must…” quote by Carl Sagan](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bbf/carl-sagan-160_criticism_n-o-scientist-likes-to-be-criticized-but_877385.jpg)
![“[ When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996 :] If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.” quote by Carl Sagan](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/875/carl-sagan-160_belief_when-a-religious-couple-wrote-to-sagan-a_25095.jpg)
