Carl Sagan

Award won Role or nomination

1. 1934 age 0

   Born

2. 1996 age 62

   Died

3. 1997 age 62

   CreditContactscreenwriter

• ADAnn Druyan2 titles
• RZRobert Zemeckis1 title
• ASAlan Silvestri1 title
• GBGeoffrey Blake1 title
• SSSteve Starkey1 title
• DBDon Burgess1 title
• ASArthur Schmidt1 title
• WFWilliam Fichtner1 title
• JFJodie Foster1 title
• JHJohn Hurt1 title

• Spouse

  • ADAnn Druyan

• Taught

  • NTNeil deGrasse Tyson
  • BNBill Nye

Nothing recorded for: Partner, Parents, Children, Siblings, Influenced by, Studied under.

• There is a place with four suns in the sky — red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth — and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• It is easy to create an interstellar radio message which can be recognized as emanating unambiguously from intelligent beings. A modulated signal (‘beep,’ ‘beep-beep,’ . . . ) comprising the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, for example, consists exclusively of the first 12 prime numbers—that is, numbers that can be divided only by 1, or by themselves. A signal of this kind, based on a simple mathematical concept, could only have a biological origin. . . . But by far the most promising method is to send pictures.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Imagine, a room, awash in gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches. The other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well, that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas ... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you ... On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• 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 something like that happened in politics or religion.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0

• We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.

  Carl Sagan, CC BY-SA 4.0