Quotes by Carl Sagan
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
If you lived two or three millennia ago, there was no shame in holding that the Universe was made for us. It was an appealing thesis consistent with everything we knew; it was what the most learned among us taught without qualification. But we have found out much since then. Defending such a position today amounts to willful disregard of the evidence, and a flight from self-knowledge.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology - but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
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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Carl Sagan Quotes
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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Carl Sagan Quotes
As we learn more and more about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do ... When Newton explained the motion of the planets by the universal theory of gravitation, it no longer was necessary for angels to push and pummel the planets about. When Pierre Simon, the Marquis de Laplace, proposed to explain the origin of the solar system - although not the origin of matter - in terms of physical laws as well, even the necessity for a god involved in the origins of things seemed profoundly challenged.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Who discovered that CFCs [chlorofluorocarbons] posed a threat to the ozone layer? Was it the principal manufacturer, the DuPont Corporation, exercising corporate responsibility? Was it the Environmental Protection Agency protecting us? Was it the Department of Defense defending us? No, it was two ivory-tower, white-coated university scientists working on something else - Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California, Irvine. Not even an Ivy League university. No one instructed them to look for dangers to the environment. They were pursuing fundamental research. They were scientists following their own interests. Their names should be known to every schoolchild.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
If the Universe really [is] made for us, if there really is a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, then science has done something cruel and heartless, whose chief virtue would perhaps be a testing of our ancient faiths. But if the Universe is heedless of our aspirations and our destiny, science provides the greatest possible service by awakening us to our true circumstances. In accord with the unforgiving principle of natural selection, we are charged with our own preservation - under penalty of extinction.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Real patriots ask questions.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Handguns are available for self protection in Seattle, but not in nearby Vancouver, Canada; handgun killings are five times more common and the handgun suicide rate is ten times greater in Seattle. Guns make impulsive killing easy.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
If you want to know when the next eclipse of the Sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you'll do much better with scientists.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend time wondering why nature is the way it is.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?
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Carl Sagan Quotes
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
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Carl Sagan Quotes
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
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Carl Sagan Quotes