1,131 Quotes by Carl Sagan

In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage – at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science.

This oak tree and me, we’re made of the same stuff.

A radio telescope works more like a light meter than a camera. You point it toward some fairly broad region of the sky, and it records how much energy, in a particular radio frequency, is coming down to Earth.

There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists can retire. And because this is so, the world is far more interesting, both.

The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us – there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

If we’re capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn’t some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?