Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 11

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• There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Interesting, Imperfection

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• We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Kings, Volcanoes

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.65, Ballantine Books

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• The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.

  Carl Sagan

  Animal, Culture, Tools

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• There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Wonder, Injury

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.89, Ballantine Books

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• I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Who We Are, Where We Came

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.197, Penguin

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• What's the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses.

  Carl Sagan

  Analysis, Littles, Boring

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.476, Ballantine Books

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• There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for humen well-being, including estrogen and progesterone in females. The fact that complex behavioural patterns can be triggered by a tiny concentration of moleculas coursing through the bloodstream, and that different animals of the same species generate different amounts of these hormones, is something worth thinking about when it's time to judge such matters as free will, individual responsibility, and law and order.

  Carl Sagan

  Responsibility, Thinking, Animal

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• At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Heart, Eye

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.278, Simon and Schuster

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• Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

  Carl Sagan

  Self Esteem, Past, Challenges

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.

  Carl Sagan

  Brain, Connections, Machines

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 278, 1980.

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• If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

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• There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity

  Carl Sagan

  Philosophical, Perspective, Humanity

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

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• It's sometimes easier to reject strong evidence than to admit that we've been wrong, this is information about ourselves worth having.

  Carl Sagan

  Strong, Self Worth, Information

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.315, Ballantine Books

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• Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

  Carl Sagan

  Doe, Pseudoscience, Would Be

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.23, Ballantine Books

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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?

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Believe, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.32, Ballantine Books

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• Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth... then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

  Carl Sagan

  Ocean, Perfect Days, Years

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• All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

  Carl Sagan

  Risk, Inquiry, Elements

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.13, Ballantine Books

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• Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

  Carl Sagan

  Love You, World, Want

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.48, Ballantine Books

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• Science is a way of thinking that helps you not to fool yourself.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Way, Fool

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• I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Science, Claims

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.73, Ballantine Books

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• We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.

  Carl Sagan

  Real, Quality, Stories

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want . . . but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy . . . try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

  Carl Sagan

  Sex, Children, Real

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• Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

  Carl Sagan

  Nature, Children, Important

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• A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

  Carl Sagan

  Freedom, Science, Simple

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.176, Ballantine Books

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• The passion to explore is at the heart of being human.

  Carl Sagan

  Nature, Passion, Heart

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