Sagan Quotes

1. "Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan"
Author: Carl Sagan

2. "[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]If ‘fulfilled prophecy' is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses."
Author: Carl Sagan

3. "In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.[Dedication to Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan, in Cosmos]"
Author: Carl Sagan

4. "Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy."
Author: David Bentley Hart

5. "A human being weighing 70 kilograms contains among other things:-45 litres of water-Enough chalk to whiten a chicken pen-Enough phosphorus for 2,200 matches-Enough fat to make approximately 70 bars of soap-Enough iron to make a two inch nail-Enough carbon for 9,000 pencil points-A spoonful of magnesiumI weigh more than 70 kilograms.And I remember a TV series called Cosmos. Carl Sagan would walk around on a set that was meant to look like space, speaking in large numbers. On one of the shows he sat in front of a tank full of all the substances human beings are made of. He stirred the tank with a stick wondering if he would be able to create life.He didn't succeed."
Author: Erlend Loe

6. "As astronomer Carl Sagan once aptly put it, you do not want to keep your mind so open that your brain is likely to fall out."
Author: Massimo Pigliucci

7. "Skeptical scientists often point out, as Carl Sagan has, that the wonders of real science far surpass the supposed wonders of fringe science. I think it is possible to invert that idea, and to say that the wonders of real consciousness far surpass what conventional science admits can exist."
Author: Michael Crichton

8. "Everything's a game,' Sagan said. 'When you get down to it. Everything in life is ultimately some kind of strategy. If you have a better strategy than the other guy, he's going down."
Author: R.A. Nelson

9. "My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical."
Author: Richard Dawkins

10. "Interviewer: Didn't Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn't want to believe. he wanted to know."
Author: Sagan

11. "Please don't make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid, and damaging idea. You don't have to be unscientific to make beautiful art, to write beautiful things.If you need proof: Twain, Adams, Vonnegut, McEwen, Sagan, Shakespeare, Dickens. For a start.You don't need to be superstitious to be a poet. You don't need to hate GM technology to care about the beauty of the planet. You don't have to claim a soul to promote compassion.Science is not a body of knowledge nor a system of belief; it is just a term which describes humankind's incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome."
Author: Tim Minchin

Sagan Quotes Pictures