Carl Sagan Quotes

"You are the universe experiencing itself."

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

Somos el producto de 4.500 millones de años de lenta y fortuita evolución biológica. No hay razón para pensar que el proceso evolutivo se haya detenido. El hombre es una animal transicional, no es el climax de la creación.

El cosmos es todo lo que es, todo lo que fue y todo lo que será. Nuestras más ligeras contemplaciones del cosmos nos hacen estremecer: Sentimos como un cosquilleo nos llena los nervios, una voz muda, una ligera sensación como de un recuerdo lejano o como si cayéramos desde gran altura. Sabemos que nos aproximamos al más grande de los misterios.

La ausencia de prueba no es prueba de ausencia.

Somos polvo de estrellas que piensa acerca de ellas.

En algún sitio algo increíble espera ser descubierto.

Si estamos solos en el Universo, seguro sería una terrible pérdida de espacio.

La primer gran virtud del hombre fue la duda, y el primer gran defecto fue la fe.

La vida es sólo un vistazo momentáneo de las maravillas de este asombroso Universo y es triste que tantos la esten malgastando soñando con fantasías espirituales.

No puedes convencer a un creyente de nada porque sus creencias no están basadas en evidencias, están basadas en una enraizada necesidad de creer-

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate--with the best teachers--the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads.