Carl Sagan

The price of skepticism is that you are occasionally fooled. The price of credulity is that you are often fooled.

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

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made of trees, with flexible parts on which are imprinted many curious squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another human being.

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the way to do science.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.

...that it is better to understand the universe as it is than to pretend that it is something it is not.

The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir up a tingling sensation, a slight challenge for the nerves, a faint foreboding, as if we were approaching the greatest of mysteries.

...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?'

The universe is not a toy. It is a mystery.

Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for Earth.

The greatest joy of all is to understand. The greatest reward is to understand.

Science is a self-correcting process.

The universe is not obliged to make sense to you.

Every star in the sky is a sun, many with planets, and perhaps life.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment.

The universe is a machine for the making of gods.