Quote

If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes.

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
Martians
Disturb
Mars
Belongs
Nothing
Even
Believe
Life
Microbes

More quotes by Carl Sagan

Image
I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
Carl Sagan
Image
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
Carl Sagan
Image
There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.
Carl Sagan
Image
There is a report that says that kids who watch violent TV programs tend to be more violent when they grow up. But did the TV cause the violence, or do violent children preferentially enjoy watching violent programs?
Carl Sagan
Image
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
Carl Sagan
Image
I also wish that the Pledge of Allegiance were directed at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as it is when the President takes his oath of office, rather than to the flag and the nation
Carl Sagan
Image
Recent research shows that many children without enough to eat wind up with diminished capacity to understand and learn (“cognitive impairment” ). Children don't have to be starving for this to happen. Even mild undernourishment — the kind most common among poor people in America — can do it.
Carl Sagan
Image
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Carl Sagan
Image
It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology.
Carl Sagan
Image
The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
Carl Sagan
Image
The Hindu religion is the only of the World's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.
Carl Sagan
Image
We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
Carl Sagan
Image
In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?
Carl Sagan
Image
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge it has no in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental insights.
Carl Sagan
Image
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
Carl Sagan
Image
There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.
Carl Sagan
Image
Otherwise we don't run the government the government runs us
Carl Sagan
Image
What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival. Travel is broadening. It's time to hit the road again.
Carl Sagan
Image
Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities at most, there are experts.
Carl Sagan
Image
The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.
Carl Sagan