Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.
Carl Sagan
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Firsts
Species
Human
Evolution
Humans
Sin
First
Taken
Never
Moment
Perilous
History
Crossroads
Moments
Promising
Hands
Simultaneously
More quotes by 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
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.
Carl Sagan
There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises
Carl Sagan
A stars rich in europium of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique. It amazes me still. Auguste Comte picked a particularly unfortunate example.
Carl Sagan
The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten.
Carl Sagan
We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.
Carl Sagan
Books tap the wisdom of our species -- the greatest minds, the best teachers -- from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient.
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
We are, each of us, a multitude. Within us is a little universe.
Carl Sagan
We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.
Carl Sagan
The difference between physics and metaphysics is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.
Carl Sagan
But I could be wrong.
Carl Sagan
If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?
Carl Sagan
Writing a novel is like trying to solve a very long mathematical equation. Changing anything can change everything else.
Carl Sagan
We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.
Carl Sagan
You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.
Carl Sagan
It is clear that the nations of the world now can only rise and fall together. It is not a question of one nation winning at the expense of another. We must all help one another or all perish together.
Carl Sagan
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
Carl Sagan
If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?
Carl Sagan
The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
Carl Sagan
