Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was born in New York City in 1934. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago; taught at Harvard, the Cornell where he became a professor of astronomy and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. His research studies have included the potentially catastrophic effects of a nuclear war on resulting in nuclear winter. Some of his books include The Cosmic Connection; the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Dragons of Eden, and Cosmos.

The Cetaceans hold an important lesson for us. The lesson is not about whales and dolphins, but about ourselves. The Cosmic Connection, 1973.

For all the tenure of humans on Earth, the night sky had been a companion and an inspiration. The stars were comforting. They seemed to demonstrate that the heavens were created for the benefit and instruction of humans. This pathetic conceit became the conventional wisdom worldwide. Ibid.

Valerian would emphasize how we are trapped by our time and our culture and out biology, how limited we are, by definition, in imaging fundamentally different creatures or civilizations. Ibid.

The great telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well, they must be far from civilization. Contact, 1985.

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 deceits? The Demon-Haunted World, 1995.

Scientists may reject mystic revelations for which there is no evidence except somebody's say-so, but they hardly believe their knowledge of nature is complete. Ibid.

One of the reasons for its success is that science has built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Ibid.

One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." Ibid.

In its encounter with nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. Ibid.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. Ibid.

The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Ibid.

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along. Ibid.