Ifs Quotes by Carl Sagan

Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?

— Carl Sagan

If you want to make a [rhubarb] pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe.

— Carl Sagan

If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?

— Carl Sagan

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

— Carl Sagan

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?

— Carl Sagan

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate…Try science.

— Carl Sagan

If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.

— Carl Sagan

If the press descended, the science would surely suffer.

— Carl Sagan

If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.

— Carl Sagan

I would be very ashamed of my civilization if we did not try to find out if there is life in outer…

— Carl Sagan

If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.

— Carl Sagan

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

— Carl Sagan

Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find…

— Carl Sagan

If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even…

— Carl Sagan

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

— Carl Sagan

Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there…

— Carl Sagan

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical…

— Carl Sagan

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of…

— Carl Sagan

Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others? That’s who we are! We’re not who we say we are,…

— Carl Sagan

If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to…

— Carl Sagan

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience…

— Carl Sagan

When a honeybee dies it releases a death pheromone, a characteristic odour that signals the survivors to remove it from the hive.…

— Carl Sagan

There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such…

— Carl Sagan

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.…

— Carl Sagan

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If…

— 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

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it…

— Carl Sagan

Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to…

— 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

(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the…

— Carl Sagan

My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided…

— Carl Sagan

The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason…

— Carl Sagan

Where did God come from? If we decide this is an unanswerable question why not save a step and conclude that the…

— Carl Sagan

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on…

— Carl Sagan

Demon mean knowledge in Greek, especially about the material world. Science means knowledge in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if…

— Carl Sagan

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will…

— Carl Sagan

It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby…

— Carl Sagan

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in…

— Carl Sagan

In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to…

— Carl Sagan

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of…

— Carl Sagan