The Best Carl Sagan Quotes

Carl Sagan is smarter than you and has observedour diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when
and reflected on the cosmos from his patio setfanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits
for many years. Here is his wisdom:of thought familiar from ages past reach for the
- “If you wish to make an apple pie fromcontrols. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of
scratch, you must first invent the universe.”light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons
-  “Space is filled with a network ofbegin to stir."
wormholes. You might emerge somewhere else in-   “I believe our future depends on how well
space, some when-else in time.”we know this Cosmos in which we float like a
-  “The sky calls to us if we do not destroymote of dust in the morning sky."
ourselves. We will one day venture to the-  “The surface of the earth is the shore of
stays.”the cosmic ocean. We have waded in and the
-   “A still more glorious dawn awaits, not awaters seem inviting”
sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400-  “The cosmos is full beyond measure of
billion suns. The rising of the Milky Way.”elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships, of
-  "Imagination will often carry us to worlds thatthe awesome machinery of nature.”
never were. But without it we go nowhere."-  “The simplest through like the concept of
-  "I worry that, especially as the Millenniumthe number one has an elaborate logical
edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition willunderpinning. The brain has its own language for
seem year by year more tempting, the sirentesting the structure and consistency of the
song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.world.”
Where have we heard it before? Whenever our-   “How lucky we are to live in this
ethnic and national prejudices are aroused, intime—the first moment in human history when
times of scarcity, during challenges to nationalwe are in fact visiting other worlds.
self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about