Quotes by
Carl Sagan |
1934-1996 , American astronomer
American astronomer and science writer. A popular and influential figure in the United States, he was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them.
| 19 quotes | 1,959 visits |
Quotations
| • | We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. 8 |
| • | Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. 7 |
| • | I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking. 7 |
| • | We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. 6 |
| • | A general problem with much of Western theology... 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 a universe. 6 |
| • | In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It’s their nature. They can’t help it. 5 |
| • | Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 5 |
| • | If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space. 5 |
| • | Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 5 |
| • | If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go. 5 |
| • | Matter is composed chiefly of nothing. 4 |
| • | The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are. 4 |
| • | A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. 4 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals. 4 |
| • | Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. 3 |
| • | If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. 3 |
| • | The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee. 3 |
| • | They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. 2 |
