Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Saganwas an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 November 1934
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.
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?
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff
The price we pay for anticipation of the future is anxiety about it
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us - but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.
Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.
I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.
There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.
We are made of starstuff.
I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float, like a mote of dust in the morning sky.