1,131 Quotes by Carl Sagan

Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there’s no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we’re tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we’re safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream.

For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.

Sometimes she would be engaged in a laboratory exercise or a seminar when the instructor would say, “Gentlemen, let’s proceed,” and sensing Ellie’s frown would add, “Sorry, Miss Arroway, but I think of you as one of the boys.” The highest compliment they were capable of paying was that in their minds she was not overtly female.

It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us – but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.

The words “question” and “quest” are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.

Books tap the wisdom of our species – the greatest minds, the best teachers – from all over the world and from all our history. And they’re patient.

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

For years I’ve been stressing with regard to UFOs that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.