All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
CARL SAGANAll civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
CARL SAGANOne of the greatest gifts adults can give – to their offspring and to their society – is to read to children.
CARL SAGANArguments from authority carry little weight, authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
CARL SAGANStars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.
CARL SAGANIf we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go.
CARL SAGANWe are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
CARL SAGANWriting is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.
CARL SAGANIf I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
CARL SAGANWhere we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.
CARL SAGANNature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.
CARL SAGANI would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.
CARL SAGANWe make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
CARL SAGANWe live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
CARL SAGANFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
CARL SAGANThe very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.
CARL SAGANPeople are not stupid. They believe things for reasons.
CARL SAGAN