Quotes by Carl Sagan - Page 13

Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand 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. What is necessary is to reduce the matches and to clean up the gasoline.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Science
Enemy
Two
Copy Quote
Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
War
Military
Revenge
Copy Quote
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
America
Children
Hands
Copy Quote
I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said "billion" many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said "billions and billions." For one thing, it's too imprecise. How many billions are "billions and billions"? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? "Billions and billions" is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked-and sure enough, I never said it.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Numbers
People
Stars
Copy Quote
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.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Kindness
Fear
Issues
Real
Copy Quote
An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Atheist
Doubt
Inspire
Copy Quote
Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Religion
Atheist
Healing
Issues
Copy Quote
Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Answers
Survival
Years
Copy Quote
The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Democracy
Honesty
Ideas
Copy Quote
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Encouragement
Believe
Children
Powerful
Copy Quote
These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -- wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P. T. Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every minute.' But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic -- however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Acceptance
Grief
Powerful
Copy Quote
My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species.
Carl Sagan / Astronomer
Hands
Passion
Survival
Copy Quote

Related Astronomer Authors

William Wilson Morgan
Astronomer
Wednesday, Jan 03, 1906
Tuesday, Jun 21, 1994
William Huggins
Astronomer
Saturday, Feb 07, 1824
Thursday, May 12, 1910
William Herschel
Astronomer
Saturday, Nov 15, 1738
Sunday, Aug 25, 1822
William Henry Pickering
Astronomer
Monday, Feb 15, 1858
Sunday, Jan 16, 1938
Vera Rubin
Astronomer
Monday, Jul 23, 1928
Sunday, Dec 25, 2016
Varahamihira
Astronomer
Thomas Harriot
Astronomer

Friday, Jul 02, 1621
Simon Newcomb
Astronomer
Thursday, Mar 12, 1835
Sunday, Jul 11, 1909
Seth Shostak
Astronomer
Tuesday, Jul 20, 1943
Sara Seager
Astronomer
Wednesday, Jul 21, 1971
Robert Sutton Harrington
Astronomer
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1942
Saturday, Jan 23, 1993
Richard Van Der Riet Woolley
Astronomer
Tuesday, Apr 24, 1906
Wednesday, Dec 24, 1986
Phil Plait
Astronomer
Wednesday, Sep 30, 1964
Norman Lockyer
Astronomer
Tuesday, May 17, 1836
Monday, Aug 16, 1920
Nigel Weiss
Astronomer
Wednesday, Dec 16, 1936

View All Astronomer Quotes

Top Authors

Will Rogers
Actor
Tuesday, Nov 04, 1879
Thursday, Aug 15, 1935
Pope John Paul Ii
Priest
Tuesday, May 18, 1920
Saturday, Apr 02, 2005
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Poet
Saturday, Aug 05, 1809
Thursday, Oct 06, 1892
Michael Jordan
Basketball Player
Sunday, Feb 17, 1963
Peter Drucker
Author
Friday, Nov 19, 1909
Friday, Nov 11, 2005
Dolly Parton
Singer-Songwriter
Saturday, Jan 19, 1946
Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
John Locke
Philosopher
Sunday, Aug 29, 1632
Tuesday, Oct 28, 1704
Donald Trump
45Th President Of The United States
Friday, Jun 14, 1946
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834
Albert Camus
Author
Friday, Nov 07, 1913
Monday, Jan 04, 1960

View All Authors

Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 13

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Astronomer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Astronomer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page