We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.
Carl SaganAn atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.
Carl SaganA celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl SaganOur children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?
Carl SaganYour religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
Carl SaganThe near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.
Carl Sagan