Find your place in this universe with these famous Carl sagan quotes about love, life, and the future.
Carl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. He was famous for popularizing science among the general people with the help of his books.
He developed his interest in astronomy when he was just five years old when his mother sent him to the library to find some books on the stars. Later, when he went to the New York World’s Fair with his parents, his interest in the future made his passion grow further.
One of the most important and famous works of Carl Sagan is the research that he carried out on extraterrestrial life and even today, it still remains one of the top priorities of space research organizations.
In 1980, Sagan co-founded the Planetary Society which is an international non-profit that focuses on space exploration.
Sagan died on December 20, 1996, due to pneumonia at the age of 62. In his lifetime, he managed to change the way that the general public viewed science, and he left a legacy that will continue to inspire people for generations to come.
Sagan has received many medals throughout his career and some of them include NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal (1977, 1981) and the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal (1994).
Here we are sharing a collection of Carl Sagan quotes about love, life, and the universe to let you know what a genius he was.
Carl Sagan Quotes
“I don’t want to believe. I want to know.” ― Carl Sagan
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” ― Carl Sagan
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” ― Carl Sagan
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” ― 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
“Science is a way to not fool ourselves.” ― Carl Sagan
“The visions we offer our children shape the future. ” ― Carl Sagan
“We can’t help it. Life looks for life.” ― Carl Sagan
“There is much about which even experts are ignorant; this will probably always be the case.” ― Carl Sagan
Pale Blue Dot Book Quotes
“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” ― Carl Sagan
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” ― Carl Sagan
“The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.” ― Carl Sagan
“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.” ― Carl Sagan
“Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it.” ― Carl Sagan
“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” ― Carl Sagan
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.” ― Carl Sagan
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” ― Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot Quotes
“Children [are] born with a zest for knowledge, aware that they must live in the future molded by science, but so often convinced by their culture that science is not for them.” ― Carl Sagan
“Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.” ― Carl Sagan, Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
“Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“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 secrets of evolution are death and time—the deaths of enormous numbers of life forms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.” ― Carl Sagan
“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Humans everywhere share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos provides the largest possible context. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.” ― Carl Sagan
“We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That’s a clear prescription for disaster.” ― Carl Sagan
“Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?” ― 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
Carl Sagan Quotes About The Future
“Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.” ― Carl Sagan, Contact
“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.” ― Carl Sagan
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” ― 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
“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
“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
“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
“There is a place with four suns in the sky—red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth—and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.” ― 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
“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
Carl Sagan Love Quotes
“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.” ― Carl Sagan
“When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.” ― Carl Sagan
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ― 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
“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
“It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not.” ― Carl Sagan
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” ― Carl Sagan
“If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives.” ― Carl Sagan
“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.” ― Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Cosmos Quotes
“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
“In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields—mathematics, physics, some others—the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.” ― 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
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” ― Carl Sagan
“[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. … But you don’t reply to critics: “Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I’m very fond of it. It’s done you no harm. Please don’t attack it.” That’s not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away. Don’t waste any neurons on what doesn’t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.” ― Carl Sagan
“[Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. … The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.” ― Carl Sagan
“Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.” ― 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
“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
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” ― Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Quotes, Phrases, Sayings
“Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations.” ― 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
“Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to the cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.” ― 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
“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
“Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best one we have. In this respect, as in many others, it’s like democracy.” ― Carl Sagan
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” ― 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
“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.” ― 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
Best Carl Sagan Universe Quotes
“Some ideas are better than others. The machinery for distinguishing them is an essential tool in dealing with the world and especially in dealing with the future. And it is precisely the mix of these two modes of thought [skeptical scrutiny and openness to new ideas] that is central to the success of science.” ― 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
“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.” ― Carl Sagan
“I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery—and the idea is to make that resonance work.” ― 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
“I know of no area of human endeavor in which science has not had at least one important thing to say.” ― Carl Sagan
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” ― Carl Sagan
“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.” ― Carl Sagan
“I’d like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn’t even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I’d like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.” ― Carl Sagan
“At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.” ― Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Famous Quotes
“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. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.” ― Carl Sagan
“If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.” ― Carl Sagan
“Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand 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
“The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it’s just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.” ― Carl Sagan
“For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.” ― Carl Sagan
“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” ― Carl Sagan
“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.” ― Carl Sagan
“Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.” ― Carl Sagan
“Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage – at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.” ― Carl Sagan
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” ― Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan Quotes About Life
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” ― Carl Sagan
“The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.” ― Carl Sagan
“While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.” ― Carl Sagan
“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” ― Carl Sagan
“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.” ― 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
“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.” ― Carl Sagan
“Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.” ― Carl Sagan
“The testimony of our common sense is suspect at high velocities.” ― Carl Sagan
“The deflation of some of our more common conceits is one of the practical applications of astronomy.” ― 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
Did you like these Carl Sagan quotes?
Few people have had as much of an impact on modern science as Carl Sagan. He was an astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, and author who brought science to the public eye in a way that no one else ever had. He was also passionate about teaching people about the universe and making sure that they understood the importance of scientific inquiry.
Sagan’s books and TV shows, such as “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” and “The Demon-Haunted World,” helped make science accessible to a wide audience. He was also one of the first scientists to use the internet to communicate with the public.
Some of his other famous books include “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision for the Human Future In Space”, “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, and “Contact”.
We hope you will learn a thing or two from these Carl Sagan quotes, sayings, and phrases about love, life, and the universe even if you are not a science fan.
Do share your thoughts with us in the comment section and tell us which one was your favorite from all of the Carl Sagan quotes or if you want to ask any questions or have any queries send them via Contact Us
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