1,131 Quotes by Carl Sagan

Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.

I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It’s up to you.

One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it’s alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

We can’t help it. Life looks for life.

Science is not perfect. It’s often misused; it’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.

In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.

Of all the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our Solar System, there is fire only on Earth – because there are large amounts of oxygen gas, O2, only on Earth. Fire was, much later, to have profound consequences for life and intelligence. One thing leads to another.

My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call “mind” – are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.

600 million years ago, the monopolizing grip of the algae was broken and an enormous proliferation of new lifeforms emerged, an event called the Cambrian explosion. Life had arisen almost immediately after the origin of the Earth, which suggests that life may be an inevitable chemical process on an Earth-like planet.