Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 20

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• Otherwise we don't run the government the government runs us

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Government

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.143, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Fire, Religion

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

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• Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.

  Carl Sagan

  Perspective, Vision, Cosmos

  "Cosmos". p. 318. Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

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• If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life.
  Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes.

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Mars, Should

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• It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology.

  Carl Sagan

  Jobs, Rain, Technology

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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• We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Spring, Long

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• For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Time, Long

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.194, Ballantine Books

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• We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

  Carl Sagan

  Discovery, Innovation, Age

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.186, Ballantine Books

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• The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Errors, Light

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.293, Ballantine Books

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• Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.... In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa.... The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, War, Numbers

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• Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

  Carl Sagan

  Men, Cosmos, Matter

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• These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -- wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P. T. Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every minute.' But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic -- however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney.

  Carl Sagan

  Powerful, Grief, Acceptance

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.209, Ballantine Books

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• The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.

  Carl Sagan

  Art, Thinking, Political

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.398, Ballantine Books

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• We are...capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Meaningful, Stars, Compassion

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• We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.

  Carl Sagan

  Law, Patterns, Things Change

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• I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.

  Carl Sagan

  Hatred, Vision, Earth

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.199, Ballantine Books

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• Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

  Carl Sagan

  Dinosaurs, Sagan, Observation

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• The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience..... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

  Carl Sagan

  Responsibility, Home, Character

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.

  Carl Sagan

  Moments, Our Relationship, Share

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• Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen; the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome.

  Carl Sagan

  Sweet, Truth, Light

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, p.407, Ballantine Books

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• These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Land, Earth

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.17, Ballantine Books

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• If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Childhood, Religion

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.149, Ballantine Books

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• What a splendid perspective contact with a profoundly different civilization might provide! In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding we are a little lonely, and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet, the Earth.... In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Lonely, Blue, Civilization

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• The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten.

  Carl Sagan

  Christian, Ideas, Perfect

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.212, Ballantine Books

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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.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Night, Class

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.414, Ballantine Books

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