Quote

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

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
Time
Humanity
Withering
Belief
Cosmic
Often
Unconscious
Today
Beliefs
Need
Search
Needs
Philosophical
Going
Hunger
Kind
Perspective

More quotes by Carl Sagan

Image
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.
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
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
Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.
Carl Sagan
Image
Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome.
Carl Sagan
Image
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
Carl Sagan
Image
Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.
Carl Sagan
Image
Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.
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
Image
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
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
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
Image
A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.
Carl Sagan
Image
In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.
Carl Sagan
Image
Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
Carl Sagan
Image
If the press descended, the science would surely suffer.
Carl Sagan
Image
We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.
Carl Sagan
Image
There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.
Carl Sagan
Image
We can always take but never give.
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