“Whose interest does ignorance serve? If we humans bear, say, hereditary propensities toward the hatred of strangers, isn’t self-knowledge the only antidote?… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“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 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
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 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
“A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and said, 'This is better than we thought! The universe… — 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
“Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence… — 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 truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“I know that the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as… — 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
Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the… — 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… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“It was difficult to hold Broca's brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there—his wit, his skeptical mien,… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Because science carries us toward an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be, its… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Another of Mack’s patients says that the aliens have been taking eggs from her since she was sexually mature, and that her… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“Science is an ongoing process. It never ends. There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists… — 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
“You squeeze the eyedropper, and a drop of pond water drips out onto the microscope stage. You look at the projected image.… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so… — 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
Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.… — 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, 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)
