Carl Sagan Tribute page

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CARL SAGAN: ("Cosmos" 1980) The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. For the first time we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young and curious and brave. It shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made almost astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on well we understand this cosmos in which we float like a mode of dust in the morning sky.We're about to begin a journey through the cosmos. We'll encounter galaxies and suns and planets, life and consciousness coming into being, evolving, and perishing, worlds of ice and stars of diamond, atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms. But it's also a story of our own planet, and the plants and animals that share it with us, and it's a story about us, how we achieved our present understanding of the cosmos, how the cosmos has shaped our evolution and our culture and what our fate may be. We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite inter-relationships, of the awesome machinery of nature.The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can't, because the cosmos is also within us. We're "made" of star stuff. We are a way that the cosmos can know itself. The journey for each of us begins here. We're going to explore the cosmos in a ship of the imagination, unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies. It can take us anywhere in space and time. Perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds of dreams and worlds of facts. Come with me.From Wiki

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 600 million people in over 60 countries, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history. Also, a book, titled Cosmos, was published to accompany the program. He wrote the novel Contact, the basis for the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film of the same name starring Jodie Foster. During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated skeptical inquiry, humanism, and the scientific method.
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 9, 1934. His parents were Jewish; his father, Sam Sagan, was a garment worker and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya/ Clara, "the mother she never knew", in Sagan's words. Sagan graduated from Rahway (NJ) High School in 1951. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956) in physics, before earning his doctorate (1960) in astronomy and astrophysics. During his time as an undergraduate, Sagan spent some time working in the laboratory of the geneticist H. J. Muller. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sagan taught at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University. He became a full professor at Cornell in 1971 and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981 he was Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was a leader in the U.S. space program since its inception and worked as an adviser to NASA since the 1950s. (One of his many duties during his tenure at the space agency included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon.) Sagan contributed to most of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the solar system, placing experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a gold-anodized plaque, attached to the space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972. Pioneer 11, also containing the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs and the most elaborate such message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977.
Sagan taught at Cornell a course on critical thinking until his death in 1996 from a rare bone marrow disease. The course had only a limited number of seats, although hundreds of students tried to attend. He chose about 20 students who were allowed to enroll by reading huge piles of application essays. The course was discontinued after his death.
Sagan was central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus. In the early 1960s, no one knew for certain the basic conditions of Venus' surface and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report (which were later depicted for popularization in a Time-Life book, Planets) — his own view was that the planet was dry and very hot, as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of 500°C (900°F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project. Mariner 2 confirmed his views on the conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan[4] and Jupiter's moon Europa may possess oceans (a subsurface ocean, in the case of Europa) or lakes, thus making the hypothesized water ocean on Europa potentially habitable for life. Europa's subsurface ocean was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. Sagan also helped solve the mystery of the reddish haze seen on Titan, revealing that it is composed of complex organic molecules constantly raining down to the moon's surface.
He furthered insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with crushing pressures. He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through greenhouse gases. Sagan speculated (along with his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter) about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars’ surface, concluding that they were not seasonal or vegetation changes as most believed, but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.[5] Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms. So persuasive was he that by 1982, he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal Science, signed by 70 scientists, including seven Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous turnaround in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped Dr. Frank Drake write the Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing extraterrestrials about Earth.
He was CTO of Icarus (a professional journal concerning planetary research) for 12 years. He co-founded the Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 1,000,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
At the height of the Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was the last of five authors — the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper that predicted nuclear winter[6] would follow nuclear war. He also co-authored the book A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
Sagan famously predicted on ABC's Nightline in 1991 that smoky oil fires in Kuwait (set by Saddam Hussein's army during the first Gulf War) would cause a worldwide ecological disaster of black clouds resulting in global cooling. Retired atmospheric physicist and climate change skeptic Fred Singer dismissed Sagan's prediction as nonsense, predicting that the smoke would dissipate in a matter of days. In his book The Demon-Haunted World (see below), Sagan gave a list of errors he had made (including his predictions about the effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires) as an example of how science is tentative, a self-correcting process.
Sagan is also known for being involved as a researcher in Project A119, a secret US Air Force operation whose purpose was to detonate an atomic bomb on Earth's Moon Sagan believed that the Drake equation suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations (the Fermi paradox) suggests that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a cataclysm and eventually becoming a spacefaring species. Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of human civilization in a nuclear holocaust had been conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of Cosmos, called "Who Speaks for Earth?". Following his marriage to novelist Ann Druyan (his third wife) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active — particularly in regard to the escalation of the nuclear arms race under President Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, hoping to blunt the momentum of the nuclear freeze movement, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative — a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive defense against attack by nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat through decoys and other means — and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, making further progress toward nuclear disarmament impossible.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985 — the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, American anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the Nevada Test Site, beginning on Easter Sunday of 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people (including such notable figures as Daniel Ellsberg and Martin Sheen) engaged in acts of civil disobedience and were arrested. Carl Sagan, who had been arrested for participating in an anti-war protest during the Vietnam War, was himself arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the Test Site.
Carl Sagan was an avid user of marijuana, although he never admitted this publicly during his life. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he wrote an essay concerning cannabis smoking in the 1971 book Marijuana Reconsidered, whose editor was Lester Grinspoon.[7] In his essay, Sagan commented that marijuana encouraged some of his works and enhanced experiences. After Sagan's death, Grinspoon disclosed this to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. When the biography, entitled Carl Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999, the marijuana exposure stirred some media attention.
Sagan's capability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos. He delivered the 1977/1978 Christmas Lectures for Young People at the Royal Institution. He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (modeled on Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man).
Sagan with a model of the Viking Lander probes which would land on Mars. Sagan examined possible landing sites for Viking along with Mike Carr and Hal Masursky.Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award; according to the NASA Office of Space Science, it has been since broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people.
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science, such as Cosmos, which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of A Personal Voyage, and became the best-selling science book ever published in English,[11] The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a Pulitzer Prize, and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel Contact, but did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award.
From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, Sagan became associated with the catch phrase "billions and billions." (He never actually used that phrase in Cosmos,[12] but his distinctive delivery and frequent use of billions (with noted emphasis on the opening "b") made this a favorite phrase of Johnny Carson, Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers, Bronson Pinchot, Harry Shearer and others, doing many affectionate impressions of him. Sagan took this in good humor, and his final book was entitled Billions and Billions (see below) and opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase.) A humorous unit of measurement, the Sagan, has now been coined to stand for any count of at least 4,000,000,000.
He wrote a sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times. He appeared on PBS' Charlie Rose program in January 1995. (video) Carl Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time.
Sagan presents a speculation concerning the origin of the swastika symbol in his book, Comet. Sagan hypothesized that a comet approached so close to Earth in antiquity that the jets of gas streaming out of it were visible, bent by the comet's rotation. The book Comet reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties; most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, showing a swastika.
Sagan caused mixed reactions among other professional scientists. On the one hand, there was general support for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience; most notably his thorough debunking of the book Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. On the other hand, there was some unease that the public would misunderstand some of the personal positions and interests that Sagan took as being part of the scientific consensus. Sagan's arguments against Velikovsky's catastrophism have been criticized by some of his colleagues. Robert Jastrow of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote: "Professor Sagan's calculations, in effect, ignore the law of gravity. Here, Dr. Velikovsky was the better astronomer."
Late in his life, Sagan's books developed his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation, Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views ..ion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic, agnostic, and freethinker.
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a new book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the natural world.
In 1966, Sagan was asked to contribute an interview about the possibility of extraterrestrials to a proposed introduction to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to an unsourced anecdote in The Independent, Sagan "responded by saying that he wanted editorial control and a percentage of the film's takings, which was rejected."
In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name "Carl Sagan", the in-joke being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 would make Apple "billions and billions."[14] Though the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing, when Sagan learned of this internal usage he sued Apple Computer to use a different project name. Other models released conjointly had code names such as "Cold fusion" and "Piltdown Man", and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience. Though Sagan lost the suit, Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway, renaming the project "BHA" (for Butt-Head Astronomer).[citation needed] Sagan promptly sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule, but lost this lawsuit as well. Still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was finally referred to internally as "LAW" (Lawyers Are Wimps).
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about many conventional conceptualizations of God. Sagan once stated, for instance, that "The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."[15] Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations (as seen in Cosmos) was "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (This was actually based on a nearly identical earlier quote by fellow CSICOP founder Marcello Truzzi, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."[16] The quote is also known, under different wording, as the principle of Laplace — attributed to Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace (March 23, 1749 – March 5, 1827), a French mathematician and astronomer: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.")
Sagan married three times: the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan) in 1957; artist Linda Salzman (mother of Nick Sagan) in 1968; and author Ann Druyan (mother of Sasha and Sam) in 1981, to whom he remained married until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met who were just plain smarter than Asimov himself. The other was computer scientist and expert on artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky.
Sagan had some interest in UFO reports from at least 1964, when he had several conversations on the subject with Jacques Vallee (Westrum 37). Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought that science should study the phenomenon, at least because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.
Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study" (Appelle 22).
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book. The committee concluded that the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The Condon Committee (1966-1968), led by physicist Edward Condon, and their still-controversial final report, formally concluded that there was nothing anomalous about UFO reports.
Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO question was the AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel. The roster of speakers was balanced, and it is to Sagan's credit that this event was presented in spite of pressure from Edward Condon" (Westrum 37-38). With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as UFO's: A Scientific Debate. Jerome Clark writes that Sagan's perspective on UFO's irked Condon: "... though a skeptic, [Sagan] was too soft on UFOs for Condon's taste. In 1971, he considered blackballing Sagan from the prestigious Cosmos Club" (Clark 603).
Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he recognized a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon. However, Westrum writes that "Sagan spent very little time researching UFOs ... he thought that little evidence existed to show that the UFO phenomenon represented alien spacecraft and that the motivation for interpreting UFO observations as spacecraft was emotional" (Westrum 37).
It is sometimes noted that Sagan's generally skeptical attitude to UFOs conflicted sharply with his views in a 1966 book he wrote with Russian astronomer and astrophysicist I.S. Shklovskii, Intelligent Life in the Universe. Here Sagan instead argued that technologically advanced alien civilizations were common and he considered it very probable that Earth had been visited many times in the past. Yet only a few years later in UFO's: A Scientific Debate, Sagan was now highly skeptical of interstellar visitation. As to the physical possibility of interstellar travel, Sagan brought up the proposed Bussard ramjet as an interstellar vehicle. While not terribly practical, Sagan thought such proposed propulsion systems were nevertheless important because they demonstrated that there were conceivable ways of accomplishing interstellar travel "without bumping into fundamental physical constraints. And this suggests that it is premature to say that interstellar space flight is out of the question." But to this Sagan added, "I believe the numbers work out in such a way that UFO's as interstellar vehicles is extremely unlikely, but I think it is an equally bad mistake to say that interstellar space flight is impossible."
Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980 Cosmos series. He rejected the idea that UFOs are visiting Earth, maintaining that the chances any alien spacecraft would visit the Earth are vanishingly small. However, in another episode he said the stars would "beckon" to humanity, and described the Bussard ramjet as one way humans might achieve interstellar travel. In one of his last written works, Sagan again claimed that there was no evidence that aliens have actually visited the Earth, either in the past or present (Sagan, 1996: 81-96, 99-104).
After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62 on December 20, 1996, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. Sagan was a significant figure, and his supporters credit his importance to his popularization of the natural sciences, opposing both restraints on science and reactionary applications of science, defending democratic traditions, resisting nationalism, defending humanism, and arguing against geocentric and anthropocentric views.
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
The 1997 movie Contact (see above), based on Sagan's novel of the same name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl."
On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan’s 67th birthday, the NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "Carl was an incredible visionary, and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space exploration for all time", said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Ann Druyan was at the center as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.
Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you."
Sagan's student Steve Squyres led the team that landed the Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Carl_Sagan/
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Carl Sagan
"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? " Carl Sagan
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. " Carl Sagan
"In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. " Carl Sagan
"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese. " Carl Sagan
"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time." Carl Sagan
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. " Carl Sagan
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. " Carl Sagan
"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. " Carl Sagan, "Contact"
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion. Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. " Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Blues for a Red Planet)
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/carl_sagan.html "A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. " Carl Sagan
"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
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. " Carl Sagan
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. " Carl Sagan
"I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. " Carl Sagan
"I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star." Carl Sagan
"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. " Carl Sagan
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. " Carl Sagan
"Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out. " Carl Sagan
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. " Carl Sagan
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan
"The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. " Carl Sagan
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." Carl Sagan
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. " Carl Sagan
"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? " Carl Sagan
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. " Carl Sagan
"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. 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. " Carl Sagan
"When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it. " Carl Sagan
"Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. " Carl Sagan
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/dr._carl_sagan/
“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 collected and used” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
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.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“It's better to light a candle then to curse the darkness.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
“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. So” Dr. Carl Sagan quote
Carl Sagan dies at 62
Astronomer, author looked for what the universe might hold December 20, 1996 Web posted at: 7:00 p.m. ESTFrom correspondent Norma Quarles
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Astronomer Carl Edward Sagan, a gifted storyteller who extolled and explored the grandeur and mystery of the universe in lectures, books and an acclaimed TV series, died Friday after a two-year battle with bone marrow disease. He was 62.
Sagan died of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he had a bone-marrow transplant in April 1995, a center spokeswoman said. The center had identified his disease as myelodysplasia, a form of anemia also known as preleukemia syndrome.
Born in New York City in 1934, Sagan was a noted astronomer whose lifelong passion was searching for intelligent life in the cosmos.
"The significance of a finding that there are other beings who share this universe with us would be absolutely phenomenal, it would be an epochal event in human history," Sagan once said.
(480K/21 sec. AIFF or WAV sound) Sagan began researching the origins of life in the 1950s and went on to play a leading role in every major U.S. spacecraft expedition to the planets.
"We have looked close-up at dozens of new worlds. Worlds we never saw before. And unless we are so stupid to destroy ourselves, we are going to be moving out to space in the next century," he said. "And if I'm fortunate enough to have played a part in the first preliminary reconnaissance in the solar system, that's a terrifically exciting thing."
"We have swept through all of the planets in the solar system, from Mercury to Neptune, in a historic 20 (to) 30 year age of spacecraft discovery," Sagan once said.
Sagan made his mark early with research showing that Venus is scorching hot and Mars is a cold desert. Among his many gifts was the ability to communicate his knowledge about the cosmos.
"Are we an exceptionally unlikely accident or is the universe brimming over with intelligence? (It's) a vital question for understanding ourselves and our history," Sagan said.
Radio telescopes listening for signs of life in the billions of stars and galaxies, as part of a program close to Sagan's heart, have so far received no response.
"It says something about the rarity and preciousness of life on this planet," he said. "The flip side of not finding life on another planet is appreciating life on Earth."
Outside his research, Sagan also hosted a popular television series on PBS called "Cosmos." He published hundreds of scientific papers; wrote eight books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Dragons of Eden"; and was a professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Sagan came close to death twice after being diagnosed with blood disease in 1994. Bone marrow donated by his sister, along with chemotherapy, put his cancer in remission.
Speaking at a conference after that episode, he said, "I'd like to begin with a personal remark. I've been in Seattle for the past months, fighting a life-threatening illness which it looks as if I've surmounted."
Despite his illness, Sagan continued his dream of going to the stars.
"The job is by no means done," he said. "We will look for the boundary between the solar system and the interstellar medium and then we'll voyage on forever in the dark between the stars.
Awards Dr. Sagan accumulated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan):Annual Award for Television Excellence - 1981 - Ohio State University - PBS series Cosmos
Apollo Achievement Award - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (twice)
Emmy - Outstanding Individual Achievement - 1981 - PBS series Cosmos
Emmy - Outstanding Informational Series - 1981 - PBS series Cosmos
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Helen Caldicott Leadership Award - Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament
Homer Award - 1997 - Contact
Hugo Award - 1981 - Cosmos
Humanist of the Year - 1981 - Awarded by the American Humanist Association
In Praise of Reason Award - 1987 - Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Isaac Asimov Award - 1994 - Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award - American Astronautical Society
John W. Campbell Memorial Award - 1974 - Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
Joseph Priestley Award - "For distinguished contributions to the welfare of mankind"
Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific - 1974
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal - Awarded by the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation
Locus Award 1986 - Contact
Lowell Thomas Award - Explorers Club - 75th Anniversary
Masursky Award - American Astronomical Society
Oersted Medal - 1990 - American Association of Physics Teachers
Peabody Award - 1980 - PBS series Cosmos
Prix Galbert - The international prize of Astronautics
Public Welfare Medal - 1994 - National Academy of Sciences
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction - 1978 - The Dragons of Eden
SF Chronicle Award - 1998 - Contact Carl Sagan Memorial Award - Named in his honor
Named 99th "Greatest American" on the June 5, 2005
"Greatest American" show on the Discovery Channel...