Quote

The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

Carl Sagan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Carl Sagan
Age: 62 †
Born: 1934
Born: November 9
Died: 1996
Died: December 20
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Physicist
Planetary Scientist
Science Communicator
Brooklyn
New York
Carl Edward Sagan
Sagan
Carl E. Sagan
Carl E Sagan
C. E. Sagan
C.E. Sagan
C E Sagan
C. Sagan
C Sagan
Sagan C
Sagan C.
Sagan C. E.
Sagan CE
Came
Galaxies
Stars
Distances
Past
Telescopes
Earth
Galaxy
Everything
Immense
Mean
Pace
Time
Machines
Distance

More quotes by Carl Sagan

Image
Writing a novel is like trying to solve a very long mathematical equation. Changing anything can change everything else.
Carl Sagan
Image
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
Carl Sagan
Image
Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species.
Carl Sagan
Image
We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.
Carl Sagan
Image
Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
Carl Sagan
Image
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.
Carl Sagan
Image
If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?
Carl Sagan
Image
Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error. . . .
Carl Sagan
Image
If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?
Carl Sagan
Image
The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based.
Carl Sagan
Image
Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse
Carl Sagan
Image
If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go
Carl Sagan
Image
Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
Carl Sagan
Image
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
Image
They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.
Carl Sagan
Image
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan
Image
The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood
Carl Sagan
Image
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
Image
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.
Carl Sagan
Image
We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
Carl Sagan