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Carl Sagan Quotes

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Famous Carl Sagan Quotes

“I'm frequently asked, "Do you believe there's extraterrestrial intelligence?" I give the standard arguments- there are a lot of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use the word billions, and so on. Then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it. Often, I'm asked next, "What do you really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yes, but what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don’t Sophocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus dictate their lost books?”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“Another of Mack’s patients says that the aliens have been taking eggs from her since she was sexually mature, and that her reproductive system baffles her gynecologist. Is it baffling enough to write the case up and submit a research paper to The New England Journal of Medicine? Apparently it’s not that baffling.”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.”

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Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for religions and nations to sell. This is not an issue of which we might anticipate widespread skepticism. People will want to believe it, even if the evidence is meager to nil... compelling testimony ... provides that our personality, character, memory ... resides in the matter of the brain, it is easy not to focus on it, to find ways to evade the weight of the evidence.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

KnowsShouldMindHumansSometimesHappensLastsScienceReligionChangeInterestingViewsLearningHappenedPositionHumilityEvidenceArgumentScientistPainfulPhysicsHeartacheRecallsSkepticismLast TimeMistakenDnaScience And ReligionSkepticalSkepticScience And TechnologyArt And ScienceScientific MethodModern SciencePhilosophy Of ScienceNatural ScienceScience ReligionPhysical ScienceScientific TruthGreat ScienceScientific FactsScience PhysicsGod And SciencePale Blue DotScientific EvidenceGood ScienceSubtle AtheistScience LoveTheoretical PhysicsBest ScienceDiscovery In ScienceAdvances In ScienceNuclear Arms RaceInformation ScienceProgress In ScienceScientist LifeScience BooksEarth ScienceAdvancement Of ScienceFuture ScienceAtomic StructureScience FairImportance Of Science
Author:Carl Sagan
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“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

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Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”

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Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.”

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Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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