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Who really said it

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good

Written by Carl Sagan 1934–1996 · Astronomer, planetary scientist & science communicator, Cornell University
Verified In copyright

Sagan wrote it himself, in his own chapter — chapter 11, “The Age of Exploration” — of Carl Sagan’s Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1997), the volume of papers from the October 1994 Cornell symposium held for his sixtieth birthday. One letter separates the printed sentence from the version that circulates: Sagan wrote “the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers,” singular; the plural “depths” is the wording in the White House transcript of President Obama’s Rutgers commencement address of 15 May 2016.

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

For presentations

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Verified quote & credit

“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good” Carl Sagan, "The Age of Exploration," in Carl Sagan's Universe, ed. Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The widely shared "depths of our answers" is a one-word variant of the printed line. · Verbatim: “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Cambridge University Press and the estate of Carl Sagan). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Carl Sagan — Astronomer, planetary scientist & science communicator. Theme: "We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source: “The Age of Exploration” (1997)

Chapter
Carl Sagan, “The Age of Exploration” (chapter 11, beginning p. 141)
Published in
Carl Sagan’s Universe, ed. Yervant Terzian & Elizabeth Bilson (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Occasion
Papers from a symposium held October 1994 at Cornell University for Sagan’s sixtieth birthday
Printed wording
“…and the depth of our answers” — singular, not “depths”

… on the honesty and selflessness of our elected officials. And we can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good. If we want to be important — not passively because of the species or ethnic group we …

Reassembled from consecutive hits in the Internet Archive’s full-text index of the scanned 1997 Cambridge edition; the passage runs across a page break, and the running head that follows it in the scan reads “154 CARL SAGAN.” The dash is a rendering of the hyphen in the scanned text.

Full-text search of the scanned Cambridge edition

How we verified this

In copyright

Carl Sagan’s Universe was first published in 1997 by Cambridge University Press, so the chapter containing this sentence is well inside copyright in the United States; the excerpt above is quoted here for comment and identification. Rights in Sagan’s text sit with his estate and/or the publisher — we have not seen the volume’s copyright page, so the precise split is not asserted.

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

The wording, and the people it gets pinned on

This one is genuinely Sagan — which makes it unusual for a quote that circulates entirely without a source. What has gone wrong is the wording, and the paper trail.

“the depths of our answers” variant

Sagan’s printed sentence is singular: “the depth of our answers.” The plural appears in the White House transcript of President Obama’s Rutgers commencement address of 15 May 2016 ↗, and a full-text search of digitized books turns up no book at all using “the depths of our answers, our willingness” ↗.

Cesare Pavese mis-credit

Compilations in the Pocket Book of Mindfulness series print the first half of the line under the Italian writer’s name — the scanned text reads “Cesare Pavese: We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions…” ↗, immediately after a genuine Pavese line about remembering moments rather than days. Nothing connects the sentence to Pavese beyond that page.

Wikiquote’s “Misattributed” list stale

Wikiquote files the line as misattributed ↗, crediting it to a 2014 self-published book and stating that no reference to it exists before Obama’s 2016 speech. It is in a 1997 Cambridge University Press book ↗, and Lewis Pinault’s Consulting Demons, published January 2000 ↗, already prints it signed “—Carl Sagan.”

The Cosmos line sibling

The two get swapped constantly. Wikiquote sources “If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers” to Cosmos (1980), p. 193 ↗. That is a different sentence from a different book, and it has no “what feels good” clause.

Sagan really wrote it — in “The Age of Exploration,” his own chapter in Carl Sagan’s Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ↗ — but with “depth,” singular.

Context

Why he said it

In October 1994 Cornell threw a two-day symposium for Carl Sagan’s sixtieth birthday. The papers became a book, Carl Sagan’s Universe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1997 — and Sagan contributed a chapter of his own, “The Age of Exploration.” The famous sentence sits inside a passage about where human significance actually comes from: not from being cosmically special, and not from the honesty of our politicians, but from what we are brave enough to ask and honest enough to accept in reply.

It is a sharpened version of a thought he had used before. Cosmos (1980) has the gentler formulation — “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers” — and the two lines are constantly swapped for each other online. The later version adds the clause that gives it its edge: our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

Our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

A note on why this looks like a fake (and isn’t)

The quote has every marker of an internet fabrication: no source anywhere on the big aggregator sites, a famous name attached, and a tidily inspirational shape. Wikiquote currently files it under Misattributed, with an editor’s note claiming it originated with a 2014 self-published book and that no trace of it exists online before Obama’s May 2016 Rutgers speech.

Both halves of that note are wrong. The sentence is printed in a 1997 Cambridge University Press book, in a chapter by Sagan himself; and it was already being quoted, with Sagan’s name attached, in Lewis Pinault’s Consulting Demons, published in January 2000.

Explore

Filed under

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

Truth Doubt Courage Knowledge

Go further

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.

Search inside the Cambridge scan: the sentence in Carl Sagan's Universeopenlibrary.org

Open Library full-text search returns the sentence in the scanned 1997 Cambridge volume (and in Lewis Pinault's Consulting Demons).
The volume's contents page: chapter 11, by Carl Saganopenlibrary.org

Returns the book's table of contents line — "11 The Age of Exploration CARL SAGAN 141" — alongside the quoted passage.
Carl Sagan's Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1997) — edition recordopenlibrary.org

Editors Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson; notes that the papers come from a symposium held October 1994 at Cornell for Sagan's sixtieth birthday.
Internet Archive scan of the 1997 Cambridge volumearchive.org

The digitized copy whose full text carries the passage; borrowing is restricted, but the text is searchable.
Carl Sagan — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Still lists this line under Misattributed; separately sources the sibling line "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions…" to Cosmos (1980), p. 193.
Obama's Rutgers commencement address, 15 May 2016 (transcript)obamawhitehouse.archives.gov

The White House transcript quotes Sagan with the plural "the depths of our answers" — the form now most often reposted.

The author

Who was Carl Sagan?

Carl Sagan

1934–1996 · Astronomer, planetary scientist & science communicator

Carl Sagan (born 9 November 1934, died 20 December 1996) was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University, where he also directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He is best known for co-writing and presenting the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which reached audiences in dozens of countries, and for a shelf of bestselling books that made him one of the most influential science communicators of his generation. The sentence on this page comes from the last stretch of his career — a chapter written for the book that grew out of his own sixtieth-birthday symposium at Cornell.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Carl Sagan, “The Age of Exploration,” chap. 11 in Carl Sagan’s Universe, ed. Yervant Terzian and Elizabeth Bilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chapter beginning p. 141. The printed sentence reads “the depth of our answers”; the plural “depths” appears in the White House transcript of President Barack Obama’s commencement address at Rutgers University, 15 May 2016.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-can-judge-our-progress-by-the-courage-of-our-questions/

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