Carl Sagan Quotes

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

I think people need fantasy, but I think they also need to know that they're not being lied to. I think sometimes the fantasy can betray people and become more difficult for people's lives than just truth. I can't stand delusion. Delusion makes me sick.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

The truth, huh? No one wants to hear the truth. The truth is never sexy. But you... You are too goddamned sexy to be real. -Christian to Lissa

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

I'm a fan of the truth... even if it's painfully hard to accept.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

You can't really pretend something is rosier than it is and expect people to buy it.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Reality is easy. It's deception that's the hard work.

I came here to tell you the truth, the good, the bad and the ugly.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

The truth cannot be deceptive, and one who sees it cannot be deceived.

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

Reality has a way of intruding upon illusion.

People are starved for the truth, and when something comes along that even looks like the truth, people will latch onto it because everything's so false.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?

No. Harsh truth was better than comfortable lies. It had to be.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.

I've grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place.

More often than not, things and people are as they appear.