Carl Sagan

"The brain is not like a computer. The brain is far more complex."

"I would be delighted if the afterlife existed and turned out to be like a library."

"We make up conspiracy theories to make sense of the world."

"There is nothing inherently wrong with computers. The problem is the narrow and impoverished vision of their possibilities."

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

"The truth is like a lion; you do not have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."

"We are capable of deluding ourselves."

"Somewhere, somehow, everything we know is wrong."

"The Earth is the only known world so far known to harbor life."

"Many of the people who are prominent in evangelicism are people who wouldn't let you in the back door of their house."

"We live in a very complex world with many ways of knowing."

"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Religion does not."

"Somewhere there are people to whom we owe some duty."

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

"Curiosity is the engine of all human achievement."

"The most important thing is to be skeptical, but open-minded."

"What an astonishing thing a book is."

"For most of human history, nobody could do much about their ancestors."

"A religion that does not embrace science is incompatible with the times."

"Humans are good at pattern recognition, even when patterns don't exist."

"The truth is far more wondrous than any fiction."

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale blue light."

"Perhaps if we knew each other better, we would like each other less."

"We are made of the same stuff that makes up everything in the universe."

"Science is not a body of dogma that you have to believe. It is a tool for understanding the world."

"Those that have been skeptical of science will be the first to demand its benefits."

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."

"Thinking is a profound human activity."

"The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how little we know."

"I wouldn't recommend marriage to anyone, but I would recommend it to me."