“When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“It is now almost possible to assign color combinations, based on the colors of clouds and sky, to every planet in the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“If you’re only sceptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything. You become a crochety misanthrope… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“The theologian Meric Casaubon argued—in his 1668 book, Of Credulity and Incredulity—that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Would we argue that ten thousand target nuclear warheads are likely to enhance the prospect for our survival? What account would we… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood.” — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. — 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
“The American and Russian capabilities in space science and technology mesh; they interdigitate. Each is strong where the other is weak. This… — 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
