Carl Sagan Quotes

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.

Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing on its face. It is about attacking a problem with the most manicured of claws and tearing it down into sensible, edible pieces.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

It is in the best interests of civilization and our economy and our nation to understand what objective truths are as revealed by the methods and tools of science.

The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

There is... in our day, a powerful antidote to nonsense, which hardly existed in earlier times - I mean science. Science cannot be ignored or rejected, because it is bound up with modern technique; it is essential alike to prosperity in peace and to victory in war. That is, perhaps from an intellectual point of view, the most hopeful feature of our age, and the one which makes it most likely that we shall escape complete submersion in some new or old superstition.

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

I grew up in a very rationalist household. My father, in particular, came from that mid-century tradition of thinking science will ultimately explain everything.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so

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

Science is not wisdom.