Quinn > Quinn's Quotes

“We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Science needs the light of free expression to flourish. It depends on the fearless questioning of authority, and the open exchange of ideas.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos

“and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The secrets of evolution, are time and death.

There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The study of the galaxies reveals a universal order and beauty. It also shows us chaotic violence on a scale hitherto undreamed of. That we live in a universe which permits life is remarkable. That we live in one which destroys galaxies and stars and worlds is also remarkable. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“It never happens that a new constellation suddenly rises out of the east. There is an order, a predictability, a permanence about the stars. In a way, they are almost comforting.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question—the search for who we are.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Those are some of the things that molecules do, given four billion years of evolution”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The book of Nature had waited more than a millennium for a reader.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Keeping an open mind is a virtue—but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that; it becomes stale, soon learned only by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“One of the great commandments of science is, “Mistrust arguments from authority.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. But there are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan