Carl Sagan, says one of his colleagues at Cornell, "is very often right and always interesting. That is in contrast to most academics, who are always right and not very interesting. " In his books or off the cuff, on the lecture platform or sitting across from Johnny Carson, Sagan has a distinctive gift for expressing scientific notions vividly and with infectious enthusiasm. A sampler of the sayings of Sagan:
On Scientific Method. In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data.
On Materialism. I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.
On Skepticism. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
On Public Ignorance of Science. We have a society which is built on science and technology and which uses science in every one of the interstices of national life, and in which the public, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary have very little understanding of what science is about. That is a clear disaster signal. It has to be suicidal.
On Science Fiction. [It] does very well in attracting youngsters to science but not in sustaining that attraction. Over the years, science fiction has become less and less intriguing to me. It turns out that science itself is much more subtle and intricate, with the added virtue of being true.
On the Impact of Space Photos. Many of the leaders of the ecological movement in the U.S. were originally stimulated to action by photographs of earth taken from space—pictures revealing a tiny, delicate and fragile world, exquisitely sensitive to the depredations of man, a meadow in the middle of the sky.
On Natural Selection. Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today.
On the Right to Life. [This] is an excellent example of a "buzz word," designed to inflame rather than illuminate. There is no right to life in any society on earth today, nor has there been at any former time (with a few rare exceptions, such as among the Jains of India). We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; hunt deer and elk for sport . . . All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we.
On Funding for Research. Without vigorous, farsighted and continuing encouragement of scientific research, we are in the position of eating our seed corn: we may fend off starvation for one more winter, but we have removed the last hope of surviving the following winter.