Carl Sagan

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

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, 1980, ch. 2.

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

Carl Sagan

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"The Lives of Stars." Presented by Carl Sagan. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, season 1, episode 8. PBS, 23 Nov. 1980.

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The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us. There is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, 1980.

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But 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

Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

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Sagan, Carl. Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Random House, 1979, pt. 2, ch. 5.

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A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them—without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret... Humans—who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals—have had an understandable penchant for pretending that animals do not feel pain... It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer... The behavior of other animals, especially the chimps and bonobos, renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are. Random House, 1992, ch. 19.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House, 1995, ch. 13.

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In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that has happened in politics or religion.

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl. "The Burden of Skepticism." CSICOP conference. 3 Apr. 1987, Pasadena, CA, USA. Keynote address.

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For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation?

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Random House, 1994.

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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

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Sagan, Carl. "Four Cosmic Questions." Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. Random House, 1997, ch. 5.

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Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love... If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

Carl Sagan

Cosmos

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Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, 1980.

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What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Carl Sagan

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"The Persistence of Memory." Presented by Carl Sagan. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, season 1, episode 11. PBS, 7 Dec. 1980.

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