Carl Sagan's scarily accurate 1995 prediction of what America would be like nearly 20 years later

We can all make predictions about the future, and looking back, some people's predictions on current days are closer to reality than others.

One common place for predicting the future is through film, with Back to the Future being an obvious one here.

The second film in the trilogy, which released in 1989, predicted what the US would look like in 2013.

And with things such as flying cars replacing standard ones on roads, it is pretty clear the film's makers were way off the mark.

However, a prediction made by Carl Sagan in 1995 about how the US would be in 20 years from then is scarily accurate.

NASA Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Carl Sagan was a well-known astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and science communicator.

And while he was widely known for co-writing and hosting the original Cosmos television series, Sagan was actually an author too.

In 1995, Sagan published the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which touched on a variety of different topics, from debunking wild alien abduction stories to spirituality.

But with his science background, the book ultimately served as a way for Sagan to prove scientific methods to non-believers.

Anyhow, there is one particular extract to the book that stands out to many today, as it describes a future America.

And to be honest, the things said by Sagan, who died in 1996 at the age of 62, is eerily similar to the US of today.

While Sagan did provide a lot of hope and optimism for the future, the quote describe the US having much division with a rather dystopian society.

The quote read: "Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Sound familiar? The quote has even led to some speculating that Sagan had a time machine while he was alive.

One person on Twitter wrote: "Suspecting Carl Sagan had either a time machine or a crystal ball."