If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.

When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and...

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

Interviewer: Didn’t Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn’t want to believe. he wanted to know.

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And...

Una científica compañera mía me contaba un reciente viaje que realizó a la meseta de Nueva Guinea, donde visitó una tribu todavía en la edad de piedra que apenas había tenido contactos con la civilización....

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as...

Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains—were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away...

Observation: I can’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t...

Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to...

It was difficult to hold Broca’s brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was still in there—his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments.