Science & Tech Quote by Carl Sagan

Modern life runs on invisible miracles, and Sagan is quietly horrified by how casually we treat them. The line isn’t a victory lap for science; it’s a diagnosis of dependence. “Arranged” is the tell: civilization isn’t a natural organism that grew this way on its own. It’s an engineered habitat, designed for creatures who assume the lights come on, the water is clean, the food is safe, the planes stay in the air, the hospitals work, the markets compute, the satellites hold. The word carries both pride and indictment: we built this world, so we’re responsible for understanding what keeps it standing.

Sagan’s subtext is civic, not technical. If “most crucial elements” depend on science and technology, then scientific literacy becomes a form of self-government. Otherwise, power migrates to priests of the machine: experts, corporations, militaries, and charismatic frauds who can launder ideology through jargon. The quote compresses a warning about democratic vulnerability: a society that relies on complex systems while distrusting or misunderstanding them becomes easy to manipulate, easy to panic, and easy to break.

The context is Sagan’s late-Cold War and early information-age sensibility, when nuclear brinkmanship, environmental risk, and media spectacle all demonstrated the same truth: sophisticated tools don’t guarantee sophisticated judgment. He’s arguing for a culture that can audit its own infrastructure - intellectually and ethically - before dependence hardens into helplessness.