Quote

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

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
Like
Well
Respect
Muscle
Feel
Quite
Ecstasy
Feels
Brain
Properly
Giving
Pleasure
Muscles
Kind
Understanding
Species
Good
Use
Intelligence
Think
Science
Intelligent
Thinking
Wells
Gives

More quotes by Carl Sagan

Image
The Big Bang is our modern scientific creation myth. It comes from the same human need to solve the cosmological riddle [Where did the universe come from?]
Carl Sagan
Image
My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.
Carl Sagan
Image
Science is not only compatible with spirituality it is a profound source of spirituality.
Carl Sagan
Image
Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable.
Carl Sagan
Image
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
Carl Sagan
Image
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
Image
A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
Carl Sagan
Image
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.
Carl Sagan
Image
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
Carl Sagan
Image
Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation
Carl Sagan
Image
A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.
Carl Sagan
Image
The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.
Carl Sagan
Image
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
Carl Sagan
Image
The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.
Carl Sagan
Image
The illegality of cannabis is outrageous.
Carl Sagan
Image
There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity
Carl Sagan
Image
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
Carl Sagan
Image
If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.
Carl Sagan
Image
Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by 'reality' or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Carl Sagan
Image
He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.
Carl Sagan