Inspirational Quotes from Carl Sagan

Words from an incredible scientist, thinker and educator. Dr Alan Jones PhD FRSA

Carl Sagan: Scientist and Poet

I remember watching Carl Sagan’s TV series, Cosmos, many years ago. The “special effects” may have been a little “twee” and of course, some of the detailed science has changed in the intervening years. Still, the charm and the infectious wonder Sagan radiated was simply irreplaceable.

He was, for me, a man with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a poet. He was, in a very real sense, a mystic who saw in nature not the anonymous hand of a deity but the true beauty of our universe in its chaos and its order.

I thought I’d share some of his words and his inspirations if you prefer. They are perhaps more relevant today than when he spoke them.

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If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

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In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

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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. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.

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Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

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If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.

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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.

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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

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We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

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Don’t judge everyone else by your own limited experience.

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Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

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For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

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The Pale Blue Dot

Perhaps Sagan’s best known words come from his reflections on the “Pale Blue Dot” photograph taken by Voyager 1.

Sagan asked NASA to turn Voyager's camera back towards Earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles). On February 14th, 1990, the now well-known photograph was taken.

In the photograph the Earth’s apparent size was less than a pixel appearing in the vastness of space amid bands of sunlight reflected by Voyagers camera.

It inspired Sagan to pen these words.

Symphony of Science

The Symphony of Science is a music project by musician John D. Boswell. The project seeks to “spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes.”

Boswell uses pitch correction (auto-tune) and ‘mash-ups’ of records of famous scientists, video samples from television programs, to create thought-provoking art,

If you’ve not seen the videos created under ‘Symphony of Science’, then you may enjoy these, which feature Carl Sagan.

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Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan born November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York died December 20, 1996 (aged 62) in Seattle, Washington

We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Tombstone epitaph of two amateur astronomers, as quoted in Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Alan /|\