Carl Sagan Quotes

In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained.

Sure, our three-pound brains might be inadequate to understand the universe. But perhaps they're just good enough to build something that can.

The book that blew the doors off the house, grabbing me with its breathtakingly deep and irresistible view of the universe and our relation to it, was 'Intelligent Life in the Universe' by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan. I recall an enchanting all-nighter completing a college homework assignment to read the first chapter.

Why do you do science? In this particular case, we don't have a very good reason to be doing this except for the knowledge that it brings. This research is especially important to young people. We all want to know what's going on in the universe.

The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.

I think at the moment we did not even want to break the seal [on the inner chamber of the tomb of Tutankhamen], for a feeling of intrusion had descended heavily upon us... We felt that we were in the presence of the dead King and must do him reverence, and in imagination could see the doors of the successive shrines open one.

What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.

My parents insisted that we should always be respectful, never forget where we come from and that we are part of the challenges facing our people

I always have felt that elders are really important. I think it's because, in my little Southern black culture, elders really were respected. Everybody listened to them. They may not have agreed - that's a whole different story - but they would totally listen and consider what the elder had to say.

Don't forget where you came from and treat people a certain way.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

Preconceived ideas are like searchlights which illumine the path of the experimenter and serve him as a guide to interrogate nature. They become a danger only if he transforms them into fixed ideas-this is why I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all the temples of science: 'The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.'

I was born to a woman I never knew and raised by another who took in orphans. I do not know my background, my lineage, my biological or cultural heritage. But when I meet someone new, I treat them with respect.... For after all, they could be my people.

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.

Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.

I remember things the way they should have been.

It's amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to.

Mystical additions and subtractions always come out the way you want.

Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.