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.

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?

I don't know where i am going but I'm on my way.

Every time you look up at the sky, every one of those points of light is a reminder that fusion power is extractable from hydrogen and other light elements, and it is an everyday reality throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.

In all our searching the only thing weve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

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.

Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.

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

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

One of the greatest gifts adults can give to their offspring and to their society is to read to children.

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.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

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.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

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.

When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot the only home weve ever known.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else at least in the near future to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle not yet. Like it or not for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

There is a lurking fear that some things are not 'meant' to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.

If it can be destroyed by the truth it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Perhaps our fears about extraterrestrial contact are merely a projection of our own backwardness an expression of our guilty conscience about our past history the ravages that have been visited on civilizations only slightly more backward than we.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it but the way those atoms are put together.

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, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

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.

The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

The Universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

If chimpanzees have consciousness if they are capable of abstractions do they not have what until now has been described as human rights How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder

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.

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.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

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

Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

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

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.

We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.

Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.

I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

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.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

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.

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

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English up to 50 words used in correct context no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

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

Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

Its hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

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.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.