Skip to content

Knowledge Quote by Carl Sagan

“[...] science carries us towards an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be [...]” quote by Carl Sagan — Download Open image

““[...] science carries us towards an understanding of how the world is, rather than how we would wish it to be [...]””

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.7 out of 5 (4 ratings)

Knowledge Learning Science

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 not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so…

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

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…

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 distance. The word suggests the communication not of thoughts but of feelings, emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they’ve experienced something like telepathy. People who know each other very well, who live together, who…

“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…

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,…

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

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 extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our…

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is…

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…

Image

Explore all 1,043 Carl Sagan quotes

More Knowledge quotes

“Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.”

Image

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow…

Alfred North Whitehead

Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature... what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action. If you know these…

William Bernbach

Image

But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress…

Image

If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Image

An enlightened awareness is within each one of us, right at this moment. This enlightened awareness is truly unborn and marvellously illuminating; and everything…

Image

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is…

“I never knew any man who had once tasted the sweetness of experimental knowledge, that ever afterward fasted after ye Vapour garlick and onions…

Image

I would rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my powers and dominion.

Alexander the Great

Image

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Image

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has…

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Image

I am an aware citizen, so I want my characters to be aware, too. They should be aware of what's happening in the society and make a commentary. They're not in a la la land.

Pankaj Tripathi

Browse all 12,789 Knowledge quotes