Carl Sagan Quotes

Context

This misquoted line is often attributed to Carl Sagan.

Astrophysicists need to be precise. Even though planets are pretty dang large, you don’t land on them with a lucky guess. Precision is the reason Carl Sagan didn’t say this quote. According to Sagan, "I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers...But I never said 'billions and billions.' For one thing, it's too imprecise."

Where did he say that quote? In his book Billions and Billions, confusing everyone. And although he said the words "billions" and "trillions" and "tens of millions" approximately a quadrillion times on Cosmos, he never said "billions and billions." That’s just too imprecise.

The original "billions and billions" quote allegedly originated with Tonight Show host Johnny Carson imitating Sagan when he was bored with Carnac the Magnificent.

Where you've heard it

You’ve heard this when someone is talking about how many stars are in the galaxy or how many calories are in a triple cheeseburger with an extra-large soda and fries.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

While knowing the exact number of stars in the galaxy might be pretentious on its own, taking a wild guess like this, and acting like it’s true, is even more pretentious.