Top 500 Carl Sagan Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.”

— Carl Sagan

152. “Science is a way to not fool ourselves.”

— Carl Sagan

153. “We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.”

— Carl Sagan

154. “Real patriots ask questions.”

— Carl Sagan

155. “Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.”

— Carl Sagan

156. “To read is to voyage through time.”

— Carl Sagan

157. “On the day that we do discover that we are not alone, our society may begin to evolve and transform in some incredible and wondrous new ways.”

— Carl Sagan

158. “Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers.”

— Carl Sagan

159. “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”

— Carl Sagan

160. “The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

— Carl Sagan

161. “Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.”

— Carl Sagan

162. “Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse.”

— Carl Sagan

163. “Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.”

— Carl Sagan

164. “Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations.”

— Carl Sagan

165. “I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.”

— Carl Sagan

166. “Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that’s their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

— Carl Sagan

167. “Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.”

— Carl Sagan

168. “We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”

— Carl Sagan

169. “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 power.”

— Carl Sagan

170. “The words “question” and “quest” are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.”

— Carl Sagan

171. “The Hindu religion is the only of the World’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.”

— Carl Sagan

172. “Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?”

— Carl Sagan

173. “If we teach only the findings and products of science – no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be – without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”

— Carl Sagan

174. “We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.”

— Carl Sagan

175. “Where did God come from? If we decide this is an unanswerable question why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question.”

— Carl Sagan

176. “The open road still softly calls...”

— Carl Sagan

177. “We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.”

— Carl Sagan

178. “Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.”

— Carl Sagan

179. “I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.”

— Carl Sagan

180. “Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”

— Carl Sagan

181. “The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.”

— Carl Sagan

182. “There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.”

— Carl Sagan

183. “If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.”

— Carl Sagan

184. “The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.”

— Carl Sagan

185. “Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?”

— Carl Sagan

186. “What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival. Travel is broadening. It’s time to hit the road again.”

— Carl Sagan

187. “In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.”

— Carl Sagan

188. “Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom. LATIN PROVERB.”

— Carl Sagan

189. “But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.”

— Carl Sagan

190. “The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.”

— Carl Sagan

191. “By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.”

— Carl Sagan

192. “Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.”

— Carl Sagan

193. “Those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

— Carl Sagan

194. “Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage – at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

— Carl Sagan

195. “There is a lurking fear that some things are not meant to be known.”

— Carl Sagan

196. “Whatever the reason you’re on Mars, I’m glad you’re there, and I wish I was with you.”

— Carl Sagan

197. “The passion to explore is at the heart of being human.”

— Carl Sagan

198. “One of the great commandments of science is: ‘Mistrust arguments from authority.’”

— Carl Sagan

199. “The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it’s just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.”

— Carl Sagan

200. “The price we pay for anticipation of the future is anxiety about it.”

— Carl Sagan