"We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all."
Read quote
12 likes
Quote collection
Carl Sagan quotes (page 9 of 30)
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable."
Read quote
12 likes
"We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."
Read quote
12 likes
"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."
Read quote
12 likes
"In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
Read quote
12 likes
"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."
Read quote
12 likes
"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."
Read quote
12 likes
"If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you."
Read quote
12 likes
"When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it."
Read quote
12 likes
"I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves."
Read quote
12 likes
"Science is not perfect. It's often misused; it's only a tool, but it's the best tool we have. Self-correcting , ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible."
Read quote
12 likes
"The fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true."
Read quote
12 likes
"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."
Read quote
12 likes
"Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns."
Read quote
12 likes
"Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky."
Read quote
12 likes
"Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred."
Read quote
11 likes
"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 an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short."
Read quote
11 likes
"What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away."
Read quote
11 likes
"The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth."
Read quote
11 likes
"The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age."
Read quote
11 likes