Religion Quotes by Carl Sagan

[S]cience has itself become a kind of religion.

— Carl Sagan

It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

— Carl Sagan

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

— Carl Sagan

“Our God Is Alive and Well. Sorry About Yours.”

— Carl Sagan

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

— Carl Sagan

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.

— Carl Sagan

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming…

— Carl Sagan

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

— Carl Sagan

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need…

— Carl Sagan

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

— Carl Sagan

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

— Carl Sagan

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human…

— Carl Sagan

The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of…

— Carl Sagan

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

— Carl Sagan

When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according…

— Carl Sagan

They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they…

— Carl Sagan

“[ When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996 :] If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is…

— Carl Sagan

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near…

— Carl Sagan

“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of…

— 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

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague,…

— Carl Sagan

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as…

— Carl Sagan

“Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered…

— Carl Sagan

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If…

— Carl Sagan

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they…

— Carl Sagan

“There were excesses in science and there were excesses in religion. A reasonable man wouldn’t be stampeded by either one. There were…

— 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

Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important…

— Carl Sagan

“There is an idea - strange, haunting, evocative - one of the most exquisite conjectures in science and religion. It is entirely…

— Carl Sagan

“You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come…

— Carl Sagan

“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being…

— Carl Sagan

“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will…

— Carl Sagan

“Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility ? I believe it is true that humility is…

— Carl Sagan

“A new concept of god: “something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is,…

— Carl Sagan

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever…

— Carl Sagan

We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain…

— Carl Sagan

“Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.”

— Carl Sagan

The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.

— Carl Sagan

At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

— Carl Sagan

Science is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

— Carl Sagan