Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. He played a leading role in the American space program since its inception.
He was a consultant and adviser to NASA since the 1950’s, briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets.
He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperatures of Venus, the seasonal changes on Mars and the reddish haze of Titan.
(1934-1996)
– Carl Sagan Quotes –
We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.
~ Carl Sagan
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
~ 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
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
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
~ 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
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
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ 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
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
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
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
~ Carl Sagan
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
~ 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
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
~ Carl Sagan
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
~ Carl Sagan
The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplatio…ns 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, or falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
~ Carl Sagan
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
~ 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
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.
~ Carl Sagan
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
~ Carl Sagan
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
~ 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
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 brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.
~ Carl Sagan
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
~ Carl Sagan
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
~ Carl Sagan
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
~ Carl Sagan
