Science Quote by Carl Sagan

Sagan sells intellect the way a great coach sells training: not as virtue-signaling, but as a felt experience. Calling the brain "like a muscle" is populist metaphor with a serious agenda. It yanks thinking out of the elite realm of tweed and tenure and drops it into the everyday logic of bodies: use it or lose it, push it and it grows, neglect it and it atrophies. In a culture that often treats intelligence as an inherited trait or a social weapon, Sagan reframes it as a practice - accessible, improvable, and, crucially, pleasurable.

The second line is the pivot from self-improvement to persuasion. "When it is in use we feel very good" is not just a claim about cognition; it's a pitch for curiosity as a mood-altering force. Sagan is smuggling neuroscience-flavored hedonism into a moral argument: the reward for inquiry isn't only better facts or better politics, but a kind of clean high. That matters because skepticism and scientific literacy can sound like scolding - don't believe, don't trust, don't be fooled. Sagan counters that negativity with a positive emotional economy: understanding doesn't merely protect you; it delights you.

Contextually, this tracks with his lifelong project in Cosmos and The Demon-Haunted World: defending rationalism without making it joyless. The subtext is a warning too. If understanding is joyous, then confusion, superstition, and passive consumption aren't just errors; they're forms of deprivation.