"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere"
About this Quote
Sagan doesn’t romanticize imagination as a getaway car; he frames it as the engine of arrival. The first sentence indulges the obvious risk: imagination can “carry us” to “worlds that never were,” a phrase that gently concedes fantasy, error, and wishful thinking. But that concession is a setup. The pivot - “But without it we go nowhere” - snaps the reader from daydream to necessity. Imagination isn’t a decorative human trait; it’s the precondition for progress.
The intent is characteristically Sagan: to rehabilitate wonder as a serious instrument of knowledge. Coming from a scientist who spent a career translating cosmic scale into human language, the line pushes back against a common caricature of science as purely mechanical or anti-poetic. He’s arguing that rigorous inquiry begins in an unproven place: the ability to picture what you cannot yet verify. Every hypothesis is, at first, a kind of controlled fiction. The trick is not to banish imagination, but to discipline it with evidence.
Subtextually, Sagan is also warning against a culture that mistakes skepticism for sophistication. If you only accept what already exists, you don’t get realism; you get stagnation. The sentence structure mirrors the scientific method: propose, doubt, test, advance. In the late 20th-century context - space exploration, nuclear anxiety, rising pseudoscience - Sagan’s message lands as both inspiration and admonition. Wonder can mislead, yes. Refusing wonder guarantees you never leave the starting line.
The intent is characteristically Sagan: to rehabilitate wonder as a serious instrument of knowledge. Coming from a scientist who spent a career translating cosmic scale into human language, the line pushes back against a common caricature of science as purely mechanical or anti-poetic. He’s arguing that rigorous inquiry begins in an unproven place: the ability to picture what you cannot yet verify. Every hypothesis is, at first, a kind of controlled fiction. The trick is not to banish imagination, but to discipline it with evidence.
Subtextually, Sagan is also warning against a culture that mistakes skepticism for sophistication. If you only accept what already exists, you don’t get realism; you get stagnation. The sentence structure mirrors the scientific method: propose, doubt, test, advance. In the late 20th-century context - space exploration, nuclear anxiety, rising pseudoscience - Sagan’s message lands as both inspiration and admonition. Wonder can mislead, yes. Refusing wonder guarantees you never leave the starting line.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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