The Best Carl Sagan quotes

Who will speak for Planet Earth? — Carl Sagan

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. — Carl Sagan

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save. — Carl Sagan

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. — Carl Sagan

The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I’ll probably always be interested in this planet–it’s my favorite. — Carl Sagan

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. — Carl Sagan

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. — Carl Sagan

Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star. — Carl Sagan

There is every reason to think that in the coming years Mars and its mysteries will become increasingly familiar to the inhabitants of the Planet Earth. — Carl Sagan

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library — 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

Your god is too small for my universe. — Carl Sagan

The universe seems neiTher benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. — Carl Sagan

We are, each of us, a multitude. Within us is a little universe. — Carl Sagan

We are the universe experiencing itself. — Carl Sagan

There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design. — Carl Sagan

We are a way of the universe knowing itself. — Carl Sagan

The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space. — Carl Sagan

You mustn’t think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn’t been that for billions of years,’ he said. ‘Think of it more as… ..cultivated. — Carl Sagan

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. — Carl Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. — Carl Sagan

Where did God come from? If we decide this is an unanswerable question why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. — Carl Sagan

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves–without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. — Carl Sagan

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe. — Carl Sagan

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe. — Carl Sagan

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. — Carl Sagan

All inquires carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. — Carl Sagan

The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. — Carl Sagan

There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe. — Carl Sagan

The sacred truth of science is that there are no sacred truths. — Carl Sagan

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. — Carl Sagan

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. — Carl Sagan

Science is a way to not fool ourselves. — Carl Sagan

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true. — Carl Sagan

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate….Try science. — Carl Sagan

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. — Carl Sagan

Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what’s true from what feels good. — Carl Sagan

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close. — Carl Sagan

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science. — Carl Sagan

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken… — Carl Sagan

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship. — Carl Sagan

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. — Carl Sagan

Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science. — Carl Sagan

Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best we have. — Carl Sagan

Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science–fiction ideas. — Carl Sagan

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. — Carl Sagan

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. — Carl Sagan

If the press descended, the science would surely suffer. — Carl Sagan

One of the great commandments of science is: ‘Mistrust arguments from authority.’ — Carl Sagan

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations. — Carl Sagan

My wonder button is being pushed all the time. — Carl Sagan

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. — Carl Sagan

It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million. — Carl Sagan

Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds–promising untold opportunities–beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting. — Carl Sagan

In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams! — Carl Sagan

By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang. — Carl Sagan

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. — Carl Sagan

The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they’ve made a thorough mess of it. I mean, we’re in deep trouble. — Carl Sagan

Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television. — Carl Sagan

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility. — Carl Sagan

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. — Carl Sagan

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. — Carl Sagan

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. — Carl Sagan

The passion to explore is at the heart of being human. — Carl Sagan

Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe. — Carl Sagan

Maxwell’s Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents. — Carl Sagan

Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose? — Carl Sagan

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. — Carl Sagan

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions. — Carl Sagan

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

We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. — Carl Sagan

It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization. — Carl Sagan

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. — Carl Sagan

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that. — Carl Sagan

Football is a thinly disguised re–enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human. — Carl Sagan

Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . . — Carl Sagan

Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. — Carl Sagan

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. — Carl Sagan

The Earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. It is not even a typical place. — Carl Sagan

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be? — Carl Sagan

We are the children equally of the Sky and the Earth. — Carl Sagan

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. — Carl Sagan

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. — Carl Sagan

The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. — Carl Sagan

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself. — Carl Sagan

We are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos. — Carl Sagan

I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float, like a mote of dust in the morning sky. — Carl Sagan

In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours. — Carl Sagan

The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature. — Carl Sagan

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie. [Dedication to Sagan’s wife, Ann Druyan, in Cosmos] — Carl Sagan

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. — Carl Sagan

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. — Carl Sagan

A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe. — Carl Sagan

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in love, you want to tell the world. — Carl Sagan

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‘Pensees’ and read, ‘I am the great silent spaces between worlds.’ — Carl Sagan

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. but without it we go nowhere. — Carl Sagan

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. — Carl Sagan

Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. — Carl Sagan

But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. — Carl Sagan

There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill–phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self–criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question. — Carl Sagan

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

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. — Carl Sagan

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions. — Carl Sagan

In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history. — 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

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. — Carl Sagan