For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence. Carl Sagan More Quotes by Carl Sagan More Quotes From Carl Sagan Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world. Carl Sagan want love-you world Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan stars science people [Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science. Carl Sagan kepler heart science Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g-what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma-to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars. Carl Sagan stars clouds years Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Carl Sagan loyalty character people 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 meteorology successful world If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Carl Sagan hipster nature inspirational Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. Carl Sagan extraordinary proof claims The Hindu religion is the only of the World's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. Carl Sagan cosmos numbers ideas 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 marijuana weed civilization There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe. Carl Sagan atoms form dna If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read. Carl Sagan library lifetime book The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star. Carl Sagan distance stars travel The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Carl Sagan atoms together science But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine. Carl Sagan subtle imagine able I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship. Carl Sagan cosmology worship If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. Carl Sagan data atheist real Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small. Carl Sagan icons wish ideas The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work. Carl Sagan zeitgeist appeals religious There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. Carl Sagan sensitive sacred matter
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