Carl Sagan Quotes

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

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.

Truth does not demand belief.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

Even fake news tries to convince us of its reality, but it does so mostly by appealing to your preconceived notions, your shared biases, or your prejudice. How to do the opposite? To create a sense of the real and then challenge your biases. I think that is my favourite aspect of writing, and that is what I've tried to do in 'The Lovers.'

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

I would, like any other scientist, willingly change my mind if the evidence led me to do so. So I care about what's true, I care about evidence, I care about evidence as the reason for knowing what is true. It is true that I come across rather passionate sometimes - and that's because I am passionate about the truth... I do get very impatient with humbug, with cant, with fakery, with charlatans.

You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.

Bias, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Facts are your firewall against bias.

Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they are-that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would have them to be.

When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.

We censored ourselves, willingly turning off our bullshit detectors and stilling the inner doubts that might have made us confront our mistakes. We abandoned the truism that arguments are true or false, irrespective of the race or the origins of the person who makes them. We began promoting arguments as true based on the gender, race, class, origins or backstory (oppression, discrimination, history of family violence) of the person uttering them. The value that we placed on diversity and inclusion led us by stages to jettison a care for truth itself.

Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

It gets scary when you're dealing with people who don't know how to separate fact from fiction.

Fact is based upon vulgar matter.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Belief is a very peculiar thing: we tend to put more store in a belief we like than a fact we hate.

Exactitude is not truth.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.