Carl Sagan

American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and author

Lived from: 1934-1996

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Quotes: Carl Sagan

Quotes 1 till 15 of 141.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.
  Source: Ann Druyan (2011) 354

• Carl Edward Sagan

  

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  Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break th

• Carl Sagan

  

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  A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
  Source: Contact (1985) Ch. 14

• Carl Sagan

  

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  A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
  Source: Billions and Billions: Thoughts of Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1997) Ch. 14, The Common Enemy.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
  Source: Cosmos (1980)

• Carl Sagan

  

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  A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  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 is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.
  Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990) 58 min 56 sec

• Carl Sagan

  

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  Accommodation to change, the thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures are keys to the survival of civilization and perhaps of the human species.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
  Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) Ch. 1 : The Most Precious Thing

• Carl Sagan

  

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  After the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it's burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being - and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.
  Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

• Carl Sagan

  

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  All inquires carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

• Carl Sagan

  

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  Anything you don't understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.
  Source: Contact (1985) Ch. 10 (p. 166)

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