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Cosmos quotes

Carl Sagan

English (36) Français (35)

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“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are...” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no...” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted, all new ideas must survive rigorous standards of evidence.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“These infinities represent an unending regress that goes on not just very far, but forever.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Every star may be a sun to someone.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. ” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“It is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We grow up in isolation. Only slowly do we teach ourselves the Cosmos.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Across the sea of space the stars are other suns.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Thus all of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shining because of distant nuclear fusion.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“It is essential as a matter of simple survival for us to understand science. In addition, science is a delight; evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding—those who understand are more likely to survive.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“Evolution is a fact, not a theory.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We believe there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how different, must have. That common language is science and mathematics.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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universe science invention information stars books humanity time questions imagination earth knowledge courage sun culture chaos night civilization space atoms

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Carl Sagan quotes