Some Carl Sagan Quotations

Carl Sagan is endlessly quotable! Even though I write about movies, or specifically the life lessons in movies, I've found myself quoting Carl Sagan a number of times:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." —Carl Sagan

“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” —Carl Sagan

"Our passion for learning, evident in the behavior of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. […] What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. […] We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.” — Carl Sagan, Cosmos, pgs 278-279.

For anyone like me who is NOT a big fan of Sagan's non-fiction: I've just read his novel, Contact, expecting not to like it, but actually thought it was great. His language is less flowery in the novel than it when he was appearing on TV.