Carl Sagan quotes - page 12

Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God. (Carl Sagan)
The best antidote for pseudoscience, I firmly believe, is science. View quote
Carl Sagan
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. View quote
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 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. 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. View quote
Carl Sagan
What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job. View quote
Carl Sagan
Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim? View quote
Carl Sagan
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. View quote
Carl Sagan
If we seek... nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. View quote
Carl Sagan
The history of science-especially physics-has in part been the tension between the natural tendency to project our everyday experience on the universe and the universe's noncompliance... View quote
Carl Sagan
At birth all of us imagine that we are the universe, and we don't distinguish the boundaries between ourselves and those around us. ...in some social situations, there is the sense that we are central, important. ...there was a natural projection of those attitudes upon the universe. View quote
Carl Sagan
Suppose your father... walked into this room at the ordinary human pace of walking. And suppose just behind him was his father. How long would we have to wait before the ancestor who enters the now-open door is a creature who normally walked on all fours? The answer is a week. (Carl Sagan)
Carbonaceous meteorites that fall to the Earth... have several percent to as much as 10 percent of complex organic matter in them. View quote
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. View quote
Carl Sagan
Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. View quote
Carl Sagan
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. View quote
Carl Sagan
Let's say there's a molecule that produces a religious experience... a natural molecule that the body produces. View quote
Carl Sagan
Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. View quote
Carl Sagan
We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. View quote
Carl Sagan
It's a little bit like the rich imposing poverty on the poor and then asking to be loved because of it. View quote
Carl Sagan
By exploring other worlds we safeguard this one. By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds. It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and, at the same time, one of the most hopeful chapters in human history. Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it's too late? View quote
Carl Sagan
Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. (Carl Sagan)
Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist. View quote
Carl Sagan
One of the greatest gifts adults can give -- to their offspring and to their society -- is to read to children. View quote
Carl Sagan
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. View quote
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. View quote
Carl Sagan