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Thinking Quotes by Carl Sagan

48 Thinking quotes by Carl Sagan

All Thinking quotes Carl Sagan’s page

Carl Sagan reminds us that thinking is a tool, not a fixed set of facts. He warns that believing we fully understand ourselves can lead to failure, and that questioning authority keeps us from becoming passive. He also paints a vivid picture of Earth filling half the sky.

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Science is a way of thinking that helps you not to fool yourself.

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He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.

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We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

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“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.”

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

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I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

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You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years," he said. "Think of it…

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I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from,…

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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…

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Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has…

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“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become…

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There is every reason to think that in the coming years Mars and its mysteries will become increasingly familiar to the inhabitants…

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The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a…

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I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch…

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We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is…

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I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for…

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But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain,…

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

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That we can now think of no mechanism for astrology is relevant but unconvincing. No mechanism was known, for example, for continental…

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“...that kind of skeptical questioning, don't accept what authority tells you -attitude of science- is also nearly identical to the attitude of…

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For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A…

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There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex…

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At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to…

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We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think as well as we can. We are privileged to…

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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…

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In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success,…

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What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in…

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The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those…

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“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in…

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Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

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If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good…

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The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way…

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Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how…

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We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary…

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Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that…

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“I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as…

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

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There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars,…

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

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More by Carl Sagan

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it…

The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from…

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no…

“Telepathy’ literally means to feel at a distance, just as ‘telephone’ is to hear at a distance and ‘television’ is to see at a…

“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…

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies,…

In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams!

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

Don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience.

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully…

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make…

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…

Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.…

Every star may be a sun to someone.