People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.


Carl Sagan

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CARL SAGAN
For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Ri...
CARL SAGAN
Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little...
CARL SAGAN
Let's see if I got this right," she would say to herself. "I've taken an inert gas that's in the air...
CARL SAGAN
Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever valu...
CARL SAGAN
I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promi...
CARL SAGAN
But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - ar...
CARL SAGAN
Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for res...
CARL SAGAN
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an op...
CARL SAGAN
An atheist is someone who is certain that God doesn't exist, someone who has compelling evidence aga...
CARL SAGAN
Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is ...
CARL SAGAN
Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.
CARL SAGAN
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most sk...
CARL SAGAN
Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Univer...
CARL SAGAN
To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.
CARL SAGAN
As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It's a big universe, of course, ...
CARL SAGAN
We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum st...
CARL SAGAN
It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men...
CARL SAGAN
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world ...
CARL SAGAN
Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid ...
CARL SAGAN
Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.
CARL SAGAN
We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
CARL SAGAN
Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.
CARL SAGAN
We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand sun...
CARL SAGAN
You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals.
CARL SAGAN
Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soi...
CARL SAGAN
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what...
CARL SAGAN
One glance at (a book) and you hear the voice of another person - perhaps someone dead for thousands...
CARL SAGAN
Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
CARL SAGAN
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immen...
CARL SAGAN
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a ...
CARL SAGAN
Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered lo...
CARL SAGAN
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
CARL SAGAN
we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers
CARL SAGAN
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
CARL SAGAN