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Who really said it

If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space

Not Carl Sagan — he was quoting Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle 1795–1881 · Scottish essayist, historian & philosopher
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Wikiquote files this exact wording under Misattributed on its Carl Sagan page, calling it a paraphrase of a line Sagan himself credited to Thomas Carlyle. Opening his own statement as a panelist at a NASA symposium at Boston University on 20 November 1972, Sagan said that Carlyle, “upon thinking about the stars,” had said: “A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.” The phrasing people actually recognise is film dialogue — Ted Arroway’s “if it is just us… seems like an awful waste of space” in Contact (1997).

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” Thomas Carlyle, as quoted by Carl Sagan in his opening statement as a panelist at the symposium “Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man,” Boston University, 20 November 1972, printed in Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, ed. Richard Berendzen, NASA SP-328 (1973), p. 5. The popular version — “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” — is not a documented Sagan sentence; the closest is Ted Arroway’s line in the 1997 film Contact, written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg. · Verbatim: “A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Carl Sagan. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

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Provenance

What Sagan actually said, and where it is printed

Occasion
Symposium, Boston University, 20 November 1972 — Sagan speaking as a panelist; opened and chaired by Richard Berendzen
Printed in
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man
Publication
Ed. Richard Berendzen · NASA SP-328 · 1973 · p. 5
Carlyle’s line, in print
John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe: Essays in Naturalism (Houghton Mifflin, 1920), p. 1

Thomas Carlyle, a somewhat crusty old fellow, upon thinking about the stars, said: “A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.” I suspect that in one way or another we will be returning to those two alternatives in this discussion. Is it possible that in a universe teeming with stars and planets there is not a multitude of other inhabited worlds? NASA SP-328, p. 5

Sagan’s opening words as a panelist. He names Carlyle, puts the sentence in quotation marks, and then builds his statement around it — he is citing a line, not coining one.

Scanned NASA symposium proceedings, 1973
Read Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man at the Internet Archive
Wikiquote’s Carl Sagan page, Misattributed section

How the line travelled

  • 1920 — John Burroughs opens Accepting the Universe with Margaret Fuller saying she accepted the universe and Carlyle retorting “Gad, she’d better!” — then, looking up at the midnight stars: “A sad spectacle! If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space!” Project Gutenberg full text ↗
  • 20 November 1972 — Carl Sagan opens his statement at a NASA symposium at Boston University by quoting Carlyle’s two alternatives; the remarks are printed in Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, NASA SP-328 (1973), p. 5. Internet Archive scan ↗
  • 23 November 1978 — Martin Gardner opens a New York Review of Books essay with the same exclamation, in a slightly different form: “what a scope for pain and folly.” The line is loose in print well before any film. New York Review of Books ↗
  • 1997 — Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis from Sagan’s novel, gives the thought to Ted Arroway: “if it is just us… seems like an awful waste of space.” The screenplay is by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg. Wikiquote transcript ↗

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the popular wording, because it has no traceable source work — it is a floating paraphrase, not a sentence anyone is documented as having written. The two anchor texts do have clear status: Carlyle’s exclamation as printed in John Burroughs’s Accepting the Universe (1920) is public domain in the United States, while the near-identical film dialogue in Contact (Warner Bros., 1997) is a modern work and should be treated as in copyright. The 1973 symposium proceedings sit differently: NASA SP-328 was issued for sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, and its front matter carries no copyright notice on the text — only a Library of Congress catalog card number, plus a separate 1959 credit for the cover photograph — so the volume is very likely public domain in the United States, though the panelists’ spoken remarks may carry rights of their own.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Three layers of misattribution

This is not one bad credit but a stack of them — a paraphrase of a film line derived from a quotation of a remark that was itself only ever reported second-hand.

Carl Sagan Misattributed

Wikiquote lists “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” in its Misattributed section ↗, noting it is a paraphrase of Sagan quoting Thomas Carlyle. No Sagan book, essay, episode or interview is cited for the sentence anywhere on that page — and no “waste of space” line appears in its lengthy sourced section for the novel Contact (1985), which quotes the book by chapter and page throughout.

James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, screenwriters Film dialogue

The recognisable phrasing is a line of movie dialogue, not a Sagan aphorism: Ted Arroway tells his daughter, “I don’t know, Sparks. But I guess I’d say if it is just us… seems like an awful waste of space.” Wikiquote transcribes the exchange ↗ and credits the screenplay to Hart and Goldenberg, working from Sagan’s novel.

Thomas Carlyle Attributed, not sourced

Carlyle’s own line sits in Wikiquote’s Attributed section ↗ rather than among his sourced writings. The citation given is John Burroughs’s Accepting the Universe, published in 1920 — thirty-nine years after Carlyle’s death in 1881 — where it is reported as something Carlyle exclaimed while looking up at the midnight stars, not something he wrote.

The sentence Sagan really spoke was Carlyle’s, and he said so out loud from the podium — you can read it on page 5 of the printed NASA proceedings ↗.

Context

Why this one stuck to Sagan

It is a strange piece of luck. The single sentence most people can attach to Carl Sagan’s name is one he went out of his way to attribute to somebody else. On 20 November 1972 he took his turn on a NASA symposium panel at Boston University — the meeting was opened and chaired by Richard Berendzen — and began his own statement with Carlyle, “a somewhat crusty old fellow,” as Sagan put it, and the two alternatives Carlyle had posed about the stars: inhabited, and therefore a scope for misery and folly; or uninhabited, and therefore a waste of space. Sagan offered those two alternatives as the frame the discussion would keep returning to.

Twenty-five years later a film made from Sagan’s own novel handed the thought back to him in tighter, warmer form. In Contact, a small girl asks her father whether there are people on other planets, and he answers that if it is just us, it seems like an awful waste of space. That line was written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg; Sagan and Ann Druyan are credited with the story, and the film closes with a dedication reading “For Carl.” He had died in December 1996, months before release. The internet then did what it does: it smoothed the screenwriters’ dialogue into one quotable declarative, dropped the character, and stamped Sagan’s name on it.

Sagan quoted it, a screenplay sharpened it, and the internet gave him the credit.

The wording drifts at every hand-off

Burroughs, 1920: “A sad spectacle! If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space!” The Scots na for not survives in Burroughs’s rendering.

Sagan, 1972: “A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.” Three flat sentences; the Scots is gone.

Martin Gardner in the New York Review of Books, 1978: “If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!” — pain, not misery, six years after Sagan and nineteen before the film.

Contact, 1997: “I don’t know, Sparks. But I guess I’d say if it is just us… seems like an awful waste of space.”

Today’s meme: “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.” Nobody on that list said this.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Carl Sagan — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

The anchor finding: this exact wording is listed under Misattributed and identified as a paraphrase of Sagan quoting Carlyle, with the 1972 Boston University symposium cited.
Wikiquote: Thomas Carlyle — Attributeden.wikiquote.org

Files Carlyle’s stargazing line under Attributed, sourced to John Burroughs’s 1920 book, with Sagan’s 1972 variant listed beneath it.
Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man (NASA SP-328, 1973)archive.org

Scanned proceedings of the 20 November 1972 Boston University symposium; Sagan quotes Carlyle in the opening lines of his panelist statement on page 5.
John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe (1920)www.gutenberg.org

Public-domain full text. The Carlyle exclamation appears in the opening paragraph of the first essay, “Shall We Accept the Universe?”
Wikiquote: Contact (1997 American film)en.wikiquote.org

Transcribes Ted Arroway’s line to young Ellie and credits the screenplay to James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg.
Martin Gardner, “Hello and Goodbye” (1978)www.nybooks.com

A New York Review of Books essay opening with the Carlyle exclamation — evidence the line was circulating in print years before the novel or the film.

The line behind the line

So who was Thomas Carlyle?

Thomas Carlyle

1795–1881 · Scottish essayist, historian & philosopher

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher whose writing shaped Victorian intellectual life — he was known in his later years as the sage of Chelsea. He is remembered for Sartor Resartus, The French Revolution: A History and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, not for astronomy. The stargazing remark that made him an accidental patron saint of SETI is not found among his published writings: it reaches us second-hand, surfacing in print in John Burroughs’s Accepting the Universe in 1920, thirty-nine years after Carlyle died in 1881.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Carl Sagan, opening statement as a panelist at the symposium “Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man,” Boston University, November 20, 1972, in Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, ed. Richard Berendzen, NASA SP-328 (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1973), 5 — where Sagan is quoting Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s sentence appears in print in John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe: Essays in Naturalism (Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 1. The popular wording “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” is listed as misattributed to Sagan by Wikiquote; the closest documented sentence is Ted Arroway’s in Contact (Warner Bros., 1997), screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-we-are-alone-in-the-universe-it-sure-seems-like-an-awful/

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