1,131 Quotes by Carl Sagan

The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions.

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time of Homer, where there were gods of the sky and the Earth, the thunderstorm, the oceans and the underworld, fire and time and love and war; where every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

More recently, books, especially paperbacks, have been printed in massive and inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

No Green Revolution, no hydroponics, no making the deserts bloom can beat an exponential population growth.

There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.

In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.