Ideas Quotes by Carl Sagan

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

— Carl Sagan

“the future belongs to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.”

— Carl Sagan

Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science-fiction ideas.

— Carl Sagan

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

— Carl Sagan

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel…

— Carl Sagan

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

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

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old,…

— Carl Sagan

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it…

— Carl Sagan

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

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

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

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and…

— Carl Sagan

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

The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were…

— Carl Sagan

Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars.…

— Carl Sagan

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

— Carl Sagan

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that…

— Carl Sagan

...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for…

— Carl Sagan

The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their…

— Carl Sagan

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all…

— Carl Sagan

[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

Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science…

— Carl Sagan

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

Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more…

— Carl Sagan

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

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

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all…

— Carl Sagan

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