Carl Edward Sagan was born on the 9th of November, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. Carl was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, poet and science communicator.
Carl Sagan was one of the most well-known scientists of the 1970s and 1980s. He studied extraterrestrial intelligence, advocated for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted ‘Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.’ He died on the 20th of December, 1996 in Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Below, you will find a collection of Carl Sagan quotes and sayings about humanity, life, science, God and the universe.
60 Carl Sagan Quotes About Science, life & The Universe
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” – Carl Sagan
“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.” – Carl Sagan
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”– Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?” – Carl Sagan
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” – Carl Sagan
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, and they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” – Carl Sagan
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ 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 the conventional faiths.” – Carl Sagan
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.” – Carl Sagan
“I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.” – Carl Sagan
“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.” – Carl Sagan
“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” – Carl Sagan
“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
“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.” – Carl Sagan
“There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.” – Carl Sagan
“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.” – Carl Sagan
“If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He’s not good at design, he’s not good at execution. He’d be out of business, if there was any competition.” – Carl Sagan
“For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”― Carl Sagan
“We are privileged to live in, and if we are lucky to influence, one of the most critical epochs in the history of the human species.”― Carl Sagan
“The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question—the search for who we are.”― Carl Sagan
“I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”― Carl Sagan
“Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family?”― Carl Sagan
“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 the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”― Carl Sagan
“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”― Carl Sagan
“Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”― Carl Sagan
“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”― Carl Sagan
“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
“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”― 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 doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”― Carl Sagan
“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
“The Hindu religion is the only one 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.
It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”― Carl Sagan
It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”― Carl Sagan
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.” – Carl Sagan
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies was made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” – Carl Sagan
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it.
It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”– Carl Sagan
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.” – Carl Sagan
“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.” – Carl Sagan
“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
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” – Carl Sagan
“Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.” – Carl Sagan
“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?” – Carl Sagan
“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
“The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.” – Carl Sagan
“I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.” – Carl Sagan
“But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.” – Carl Sagan
“What a marvelous cooperative arrangement – plants and animals each inhaling each other’s exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.” – Carl Sagan
“We are fortunate: we are alive; we are powerful; the welfare of our civilization and our species is in our hands. If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?”― Carl Sagan
“We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.”― Carl Sagan
“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
“The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”― Carl Sagan
“Science is an ongoing process. It never ends. There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists can retire.”― Carl Sagan
“We tend not to be especially critical when presented with evidence that seems to confirm our prejudices.”― Carl Sagan
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”― Carl Sagan
“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
“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”― Carl Sagan
“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”― Carl Sagan
“But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.”
― Carl Sagan
― Carl Sagan
“Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.”― Carl Sagan
“Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate–with the best teachers–the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.”― Carl Sagan
“The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. 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
“I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.”― Carl Sagan
20 Short Carl Sagan Quotes
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” – Carl Sagan
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” – Carl Sagan
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” – Carl Sagan
“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” – Carl Sagan
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” – Carl Sagan
“Intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong.”― Carl Sagan
“I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”― Carl Sagan
“I don’t want to believe. I want to know.”― Carl Sagan
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”― Carl Sagan
“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”― Carl Sagan
“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”― Carl Sagan
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”― Carl Sagan
“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.”― Carl Sagan
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.”― Carl Sagan
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” – Carl Sagan
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” – Carl Sagan
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan
“We are like butterflies that flutter for a day and think it is forever.” – Carl Sagan