Top 500 Carl Sagan Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

— Carl Sagan

52. “When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.”

— Carl Sagan

53. “There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.”

— Carl Sagan

54. “Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”

— Carl Sagan

55. “Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”

— Carl Sagan

56. “You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”

— Carl Sagan

57. “A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.”

— Carl Sagan

58. “Valid criticism does you a favor.”

— Carl Sagan

59. “I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.”

— Carl Sagan

60. “Science is only a Latin word for knowledge.”

— Carl Sagan

61. “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.”

— Carl Sagan

62. “Maxwell’s Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents.”

— Carl Sagan

63. “Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.”

— Carl Sagan

64. “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”

— Carl Sagan

65. “We are one species. We are starstuff.”

— Carl Sagan

66. “Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”

— Carl Sagan

67. “But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

— Carl Sagan

68. “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”

— Carl Sagan

69. “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.”

— Carl Sagan

70. “When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.”

— Carl Sagan

71. “A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.”

— Carl Sagan

72. “For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.”

— Carl Sagan

73. “When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.”

— Carl Sagan

74. “Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.”

— Carl Sagan

75. “Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs – in time, in space, and in potential – the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

— Carl Sagan

76. “Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by ‘reality’ or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

— Carl Sagan

77. “We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

— Carl Sagan

78. “The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.”

— Carl Sagan

79. “We are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos.”

— Carl Sagan

80. “You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares...”

— Carl Sagan

81. “It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”

— Carl Sagan

82. “Science is not perfect. It’s often misused; it’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.”

— Carl Sagan

83. “An organism at war with itself is doomed.”

— Carl Sagan

84. “Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

— Carl Sagan

85. “What an astonishing thing a book is.”

— Carl Sagan

86. “My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.”

— Carl Sagan

87. “Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.”

— Carl Sagan

88. “We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.”

— Carl Sagan

89. “Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

— Carl Sagan

90. “The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.”

— Carl Sagan

91. “People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.”

— Carl Sagan

92. “Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.”

— Carl Sagan

93. “But I could be wrong.”

— Carl Sagan

94. “Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.”

— Carl Sagan

95. “Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”

— Carl Sagan

96. “My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call “mind” – are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.”

— Carl Sagan

97. “In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It’s their nature. They can’t help it.”

— Carl Sagan

98. “We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?”

— Carl Sagan

99. “The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”

— Carl Sagan

100. “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental insights.”

— Carl Sagan