Science & Tech Quote by Carl Sagan

Sagan is doing something sly here: he flatters children to indict adults. The line isn’t nostalgia for finger-paint volcanoes; it’s a diagnosis of institutional damage. “Often amazed” reads like a gentle confession, but the target is bluntly implied: by the time students reach college, too many have been trained to treat science as a gauntlet rather than a way of seeing.

The pairing of “capability” with “enthusiasm” matters. Capability suggests that young kids aren’t merely cute little question-machines; they can actually reason, hypothesize, and notice patterns when they’re allowed to. Enthusiasm points to the emotional fuel that education systems routinely waste. Sagan’s subtext is that curiosity is native, and cynicism is learned.

Contextually, this fits his broader public mission: defending scientific thinking as a civic virtue, not just a career track. Across his writing and TV work, he warns that societies can become technologically advanced while intellectually unarmed - competent at using tools, helpless at evaluating claims. In that light, “college students” becomes less a jab at individuals and more a critique of incentives: grades, prerequisites, weeder courses, and the quiet social permission to stop asking “why?” once you’ve learned the correct answer.

The quote works because it reverses the prestige ladder. We’re trained to assume sophistication increases with age; Sagan suggests the opposite: that the most scientifically alive minds may be the ones least encumbered by performance anxiety, rote memorization, and the fear of being wrong.