Carl Sagan Quotes
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Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
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Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
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I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.
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Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
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Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring - not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
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For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
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At birth all of us imagine that we are the universe, and we don't distinguish the boundaries between ourselves and those around us. ...in some social situations, there is the sense that we are central, important. ...there was a natural projection of those attitudes upon the universe.
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We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save.
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A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
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In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.
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The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after.
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Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are as sand, as dust - or less than dust - in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.
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You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer; there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
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It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.
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We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
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The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.
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We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings.
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History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again.
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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Anything you don’t understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.
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The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.
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We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'