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.Collection: Power
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.Collection: History
Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.Collection: Space
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.Collection: Science
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.Collection: Intelligence
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Space
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?Collection: Science
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.Collection: Science
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.Collection: Science
The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I'll probably always be interested in this planet - it's my favorite.Collection: Space
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.Collection: Space
Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.Collection: Respect
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.Collection: Experience
I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.Collection: Intelligence
I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Technology
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.Collection: Nature
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.Collection: Great
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.Collection: Love
Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.Collection: Experience
No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception.Collection: Home
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.Collection: Religion
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.
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 are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution.
In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings.
We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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.
The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?
We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'
Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others? That’s who we are! We’re not who we say we are, we’re not who we want to be - we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Taken
Even through your hardest days, remember we are all made of stardust.Collection: Remember
Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.Collection: Stupidity
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.Collection: Science