Carl Sagan Quotes

I've always wanted to answer all the questions that nature posed for us.

And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you're starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.

Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

The World is full of wonders, but they become more Wonderful, not less Wonderful when Science looks at them.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

It's human nature to wonder.

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.

I think it was this curiosity about the natural world which awoke my early interest in science.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The human capacity to be curious has always existed.

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

At a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

Physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up, and they keep their curiosity.

Science is for anyone who wants to explore their world and understand things.

I know that science is very interested in answers, and I'm just happy with a good question.

A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.

Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.

I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

Science gives you an understanding of the physical world, and it increases the capacity for fascination.

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.

I've always had questions about how things work and why it was that way. From all kinds of perspectives, from the physical to the spiritual.