1,131 Quotes by Carl Sagan

Pero ¿por qué hemos de empeñarnos en pensar que el universo fue hecho para nosotros? ¿Por qué resulta tan atractiva esa idea? ¿Por qué seguimos alimentándola? ¿Es tan precaria nuestra autoestima que no podemos conformarnos con nada inferior a un universo hecho a nuestra medida? Naturalmente, la cuestión apela a nuestra vanidad. "Lo que un hombre desea, también lo imagina como cierto", dijo Demóstenes. "La luz de la fe nos hace ver lo que creemos", admitió alegremente santo Tomás de Aquino.

Al parecer anhelamos un privilegio, merecido no por nuestros esfuerzos, sino por nacimiento, digamos que por el mero hecho de ser humanos y de haber nacido en la Tierra. Podríamos llamarla la noción antropocéntrica, <>.Está noción alcanza su culminación en la idea de que fuimos creados a imagen y semejanza de Dios: <> El filósofo griego del siglo VI a. J.C. Jenófanes comprendió la arrogancia de esta perspectiva: <

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

An atheist is someone who is certain that God doesn't exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

[In] everyday life, it is very rare that we are confronted with new facts about events of long ago. Our memories are almost never challenged. They can, instead, be frozen in place, no matter how flawed they are, or become a work in continual artistic revision.

All her life, dreams had been her friends. Her dreams were unusually detailed, well-structured, colorful.

But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals?

Human spoken language seems to beadventitious. The exploitation of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities.