Quote

If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our survival.

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
Use
Cat
Camouflage
Better
Shape
Deficiency
Must
Survival
Limitations
Make
Tools
Cats
Shapes
Tool
Intelligence
Limitation
Learn
Edge
Deficiencies
Understand
Edges
Stealth

More quotes by Carl Sagan

Image
All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are scientifically illiterate. That's...the same fraction...of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War.
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
Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.
Carl Sagan
Image
If we teach only the findings and products of science - no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be - without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?
Carl Sagan
Image
For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.
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
A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Carl Sagan
Image
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
Carl Sagan
Image
Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.
Carl Sagan
Image
The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.
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
Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
Carl Sagan
Image
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
Carl Sagan
Image
In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.
Carl Sagan
Image
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature.
Carl Sagan
Image
So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations.
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 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
That kind of skeptical, questioning, don't accept what authority tells you attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.
Carl Sagan
Image
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