Carl Sagan Quotes

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.

Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.

To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

Science is... a powerful way, indeed - to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective... in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other.

Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.

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.

Science shows us truth and beauty and fills each day with a fresh wonder of the exquisite order which governs our world.

I first became aware of the delights of the natural world when my father, an entomologist, presented me with what looked like a twig. When it got up and walked, my delight was such that I wrote a poem, 'To a Walking Stick.'

Divinity is an emotion of being lifted out of yourself and being part of something much bigger than yourself that makes you go, 'Oh my God.' And that sense of awe? It's the second rule of science.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

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

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

A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.

We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

One travels so as to learn once more how to marvel at life in the way a child does. And blessed be the poet, the artist who knows how to keep alive his sense of wonder.

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.

Humans are natural-born scientists. When we're born, we want to know why the stars shine. We want to know why the sun rises.