Carl Sagan - Quodid

About

Carl Sagan was an American astrophysicist. He is best known as a science-popularizer who showed the world the wonders of the scale and complexity of the universe.

Picture of Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan (; SAY-gən; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. Initially an assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan later moved to Cornell, where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He played an active role in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager programs. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and several popular science books, starting with The Cosmic Connection. He won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Dragons of Eden.

Quotes from Carl Sagan

Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

wonder humanity inspiration kindness space vastness

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

technology knowledge science ignorace

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

wonder knowledge

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

—Carl Sagan in Broca's Brain

Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable.

war history nuclear weapons USA tragedy Soviet Union

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

God knowledge certainty stupidity atheism

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

imagination discovery

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

God evolution paleontology

With insufficient data it is easy to go wrong.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

emotions knowledge deception

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

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

wonder creation food

Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

science substance matter

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

wonder power indifference

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Books

Carl Sagan has the following books quoted on Quodid: