Carl Sagan Life Quotations

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.

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.

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.

Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .

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.

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?

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.