Carl Sagan

Clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what’s true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

Carl Sagan

Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?

Carl Sagan

Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn’t any good evidence.

Carl Sagan

Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.

Carl Sagan

Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

Carl Sagan

Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human.

Carl Sagan

Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.

Carl Sagan

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

Carl Sagan

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

Carl Sagan

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

Carl Sagan