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

About Carl Sagan

Portrait 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...

More quotations from Carl Sagan

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

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

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

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

imagination discovery

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

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

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

More quotations tagged with “evolution”

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

—Wendell Phillips

past growth evolution revolution

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?

—Milton Berle

evolution mothers

Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial.

politics reality religion dogma purpose change ambition evolution triviality counterproductive

Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.

—Barbara Ehrenreich

history marriage evolution primates

History

25 Nov 2013 Added