Carl Sagan was an American scientist (1934-1996) who is best known for his TV show Cosmos: a personal voyage and inspiring astrophysicists like Neil deGrasse Tyson to pursue astronomy. Carl Sagan was an expert in the field of exobiology and search for extraterrestrial life.
Carl Sagan also worked with NASA on various projects including the Pioneer plaque and Voyager golden record, which were the first physical messages sent to space. Since Carl Sagan was born on November 9, celebrated as Carl Sagan day across America, following are 9 quotes on astronomy by Carl Sagan:
1. The cosmos is within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
2. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
3. For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
4. Virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology; there are hardly any that have even a weekly column on astronomy.
5. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
Earth as a point of pale blue light, picture by NASA |
6. I stress that the universe is made mostly of nothing, that something is the exception.
7. A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.
8. In the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
9. In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.