Carl Sagan Quotes

I like the scientific spirit-the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine-it always keeps the way beyond open.

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought, as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that all the lessons are true... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

Never accept an expert's opinion if it violates your own because the experts can change their minds.

Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else's position.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

Don't listen to experts.

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

Don't be intimidated by people who seem to be experts. Hear their points of view and get their judgements. But at the end of day, you've got to make a judgement because it's not their life that's going to be affected so much as your future.

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.

The bedrock of science is the unwillingness to accept authority.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Science is really about individual experts reaching a consensus.

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

I say on the air all time, "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.