Quotes by Carl Sagan

About Carl Sagan:

Carl Edward Sagan is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages that were 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The others would then fall silent and she would continue about doped gallium arsenide detectors, or the ethanol content of the galactic cloud W-3. The quantity of 200-proof alcohol in this single interstellar cloud was more than enough to maintain th...

Carl Sagan

Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.

Carl Sagan

The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing c...

Carl Sagan

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a slop...

Carl Sagan

...You think if I haven't had your religious experience I can't appreciate the magnificence of your god. But it's just the opposite. I listen to you, and I think, his god is too small! One paltry planet, a few thousand years -- hardly worth the atten...

Carl Sagan

Our God Is Alive and Well. Sorry About Yours.

Carl Sagan

No question; language can free us of feeling, or almost. Maybe that's one of its functions - so we can understand the world without becoming entirely overwhelmed by it.

Carl Sagan

But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.

Carl Sagan

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by...

Carl Sagan

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

Carl Sagan

Black holes collect problems faster than they collect matter.

Carl Sagan

Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

Carl Sagan

We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature...

Carl Sagan

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

Carl Sagan

She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Carl Sagan

At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be...

Carl Sagan

Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.

Carl Sagan

Our television signals leave this planet and go out into space...the signals spread out from the earth in spherical waves, a little like ripples in a pond. They travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, and essentially go on forever. The ...

Carl Sagan

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Carl Sagan

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

Carl Sagan

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

Carl Sagan

Author Bio

  • NameCarl Sagan
  • DescriptionAmerican astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
  • BornNovember 9, 1934
  • DiedDecember 20, 1996
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionCosmologist; Astrophysicist; Novelist; Planetary Scientist; Space Scientist; Popularizer Of Science; Science Fiction Writer; Science Writer
  • Awards; Pulitzer Prize For General Non-Fiction; Humanist Of The Year