More - Carl Edward Sagan Quotes

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Carl Edward Sagan

 Cosmos

You have to know the past to understand the present.

Carl Edward Sagan

 

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

Carl Edward Sagan

 

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?

Carl Edward Sagan

 

We are star-stuff

Carl Edward Sagan

 

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves, ... This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

Carl Edward Sagan

 

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Carl Edward Sagan

 Absence

The significance of a finding that there are other beings who share this universe with us would be absolutely phenomenal, it would be an epochal event in human history,

Carl Edward Sagan

 

We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.

Carl Edward Sagan

 Evolution

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

Carl Edward Sagan

 Science