Carl Sagan Quotes
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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.'
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They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.
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This planet is run by crazy people. Remember what they have to do to get where they are. Their perspective is so narrow, so...brief. A few years. In the best of them a few decades. They care only about the time they are in power.
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What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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A general problem with much of Western theology... is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less a universe.
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In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.
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The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.
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Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television.
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Evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God.
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If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
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If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
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The enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.
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The origin of life happened in significantly less than 500 million years. ...Six days was once a popular hypothesis. ...A process that happens quickly is a process that is in some sense likely... this evidence suggests that the origin of life was in some sense easy, in some sense sitting in the laws of physics and chemistry.
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The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?
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I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.
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Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
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I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.
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What I’m saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.
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The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
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Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed - by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.
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She too had found the experience transforming. How could she not? A demon had been exorcised. Several. And just when she felt more capable of love than she had ever been, she found herself alone.
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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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Suppose your father... walked into this room at the ordinary human pace of walking. And suppose just behind him was his father. How long would we have to wait before the ancestor who enters the now-open door is a creature who normally walked on all fours? The answer is a week.
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I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.