Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 22

Quotes about:

• A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

  Carl Sagan

  Religion, Generations, World

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.347, Ballantine Books

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• One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

  Carl Sagan

  Hierarchy, Dominance, Argument

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.52, Ballantine Books

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• Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

  Carl Sagan

  Average, Years, Atmosphere

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• The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based.

  Carl Sagan

  Men, Thinking, Wind

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.67, Ballantine Books

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• A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.

  Carl Sagan

  Home, Responsibility, Our World

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 6: "Traveller's Tales", 1990.

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• The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Numbers, Long

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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• Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Cutting, Winter

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.400, Ballantine Books

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• Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.

  Carl Sagan

  Revenge, Military, War

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• The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Distance, Mean

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.31, Ballantine Books

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• Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse

  Carl Sagan

  War, Thinking, Nuclear

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.349, Ballantine Books

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• Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Television, Vastness

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

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• Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.

  Carl Sagan

  Self, Numbers, Depth

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.151, Simon and Schuster

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• He sought a way to preserve the past. John Hershel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel.... a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it... photography. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. This man is staring at us from across the centuries, a ghost preserved by light.

  Carl Sagan

  Photography, Memories, Mean

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• [N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Data, Ideas

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• Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked "What more do you want?" We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.

  Carl Sagan

  Successful, Science, Moon

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• [S]cience has itself become a kind of religion.

  Carl Sagan

  Religion, Atheism, Kind

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• Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

  Carl Sagan

  Keys, Experiments

  "Wonder and Skepticism" by Carl Sagan, www.csicop.org. January-February 1995.

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• But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?

  Carl Sagan

  Details Of Life, Atheism, Poor Planning

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.76, Ballantine Books

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• We can't help it. Life looks for life.

  Carl Sagan

  Looks, Helping, Physics

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.21, Ballantine Books

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• Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

  Carl Sagan

  Opportunity, Other Worlds, Waiting

  Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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• The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they've made a thorough mess of it. I mean, we're in deep trouble.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Atheist, Mean

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• If we teach only the findings and products of science - no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be - without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Average, Pseudoscience

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.44, Ballantine Books

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• The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

  Carl Sagan

  Pain, Important, Pseudoscience

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.44, Ballantine Books

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• Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Loyalty, Cosmos, Earth

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

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• We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true and the beautiful. But it would be a great mistake to ignore where we have come from in our attempt to determine where we are going.

  Carl Sagan

  Beautiful, Mistake, Humanity

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.6, Cambridge University Press

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