“For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We are...capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
“We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.” — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry;… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This… — Carl Sagan Copy Share Image
But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain,… — 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
![“[ 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)
