Carl Sagan Culture Quotes

The Yale anthropologist Weston La Barre goes far as to argue that `a surprisingly good case could be made that much of culture is hallucination` and that `the whole intent and function of ritual appears to be... a group wish to hallucinate reality`. ~ Carl Sagan

You've tapped yourself in some sort of fifth­century religious mania. Since then the Renaissance has happened, the Enlightenment has happened. Where've you been? ~ Carl Sagan

But down deep, at the molecular heart of life we're essentially identical to trees. ~ Carl Sagan

Every generation worries that educational standards are decaying. One of the oldest short essays in human history, dating from Sumer some 4,000 years ago, laments that the young are disastrously more ignorant than the generation immediately preceding. ~ Carl Sagan

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. ~ Carl Sagan

They will manage to cross the ocean of becoming. ~ Carl Sagan

Voyages to the outer solar system are controlled from a single place on the planet Earth, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California. ~ Carl Sagan

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. ~ Carl Sagan

The progress and perfection of mathematics are linked closely with the prosperity of the state. ~ Carl Sagan

The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown. ~ Carl Sagan

To live in the hearts of others is to never die in those we leave behind. ~ Carl Sagan

The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world. ~ Carl Sagan

Kepler's third or harmonic law states that the squares of the periods of the planets (the times for them to complete one orbit) are proportional to the cubes of their average distance from the Sun; the more distant the planet, the more slowly it moves, but according to a precise mathematical law: P2 = a3, where P represents the period of revolution of the planet about the Sun, measured in years, and a the distance of the planet from the Sun measured in astronomical units. ~ Carl Sagan

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?" Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. ~ Carl Sagan

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close. ~ Carl Sagan

The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost. ~ Carl Sagan

There is some evidence that dreaming is necessary. When people or other mammals are deprived of REM sleep (by awakening them as soon as the characteristic REM and EEG dream patterns emerge), the number of initiations of the dream state per night goes up, and, in severe cases, daytime hallucinations-that is, waking dreams-occur. ~ Carl Sagan

Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity. ~ Carl Sagan

Those who make uncritical observations or fraudulent claims lead us into error and deflect us from the major human goal of understanding how the world works. It is for this reason that playing fast and loose with the truth is a very serious matter. ~ Carl Sagan

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.
[Dedication to Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan, in Cosmos] ~ Carl Sagan

Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing. ~ Carl Sagan

Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival. ~ Carl Sagan

I ... had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before," wrote Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century explorer of the Pacific, "but as far as it was possible for man to go." Two centuries later, Yuri Romanenko, on returning to Earth after what was then the longest space flight in history, said "The Cosmos is a magnet ... Once you've been there, all you can think of is how to get back. ~ Carl Sagan

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. ~ Carl Sagan

But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect? ~ Carl Sagan

Maxwell's Equations have had a greater impact on human history than any ten presidents. ~ Carl Sagan

When we are asked to swear in American courts of law - that we will tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" - we are being asked the impossible. It is simply beyond our powers. Our memories are fallible; even scientific truth is merely an approximation; and we are ignorant about nearly all of the Universe. Nevertheless, a life may depend on our testimony. ~ Carl Sagan

The visions we offer our children shape the future. ~ Carl Sagan

If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been? ~ Carl Sagan

In the forty-five years centered on 1910, the nature of the atom was first understood - partly by shooting pieces of atoms at atoms and watching how they bounce off. ~ Carl Sagan

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along. ~ Carl Sagan

Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed - if they're here, I want to know about them. ~ Carl Sagan

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir. ~ Carl Sagan

Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen; the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome. ~ Carl Sagan

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st ~ Carl Sagan

The whole idea of a democratic application of skepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge. ~ Carl Sagan

The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. ~ Carl Sagan

Contemplated as one grand whole, astronomy is the most beautiful monument of the human mind; the noblest record of its intelligence. ~ Carl Sagan