Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 23

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• You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years," he said. "Think of it more as... ..cultivated.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Years, Wilderness

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

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• What an astonishing thing a book is.

  Carl Sagan

  Book, Astonishing

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series (Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory), 1990.

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• In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Civilization, Long

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

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• A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.

  Carl Sagan

  Moon, Space, Civilization

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• Billions and billions.

  Carl Sagan

  Astronomy, Billions, Cosmology

  Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan (1999). “Carl Sagan: a life”, John Wiley & Sons

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• I don?t feel rejected by the sky. I?m a part of it- tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity.

  Carl Sagan

  Sky, Rejection, Tiny

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

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• Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

  Carl Sagan

  Exercise, Technology, Wish

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.245, Ballantine Books

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• The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

  Carl Sagan

  Morning, Sunset, Moon

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• If you want to make a [rhubarb] pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Pie, Scratches, Want

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• And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?

  Carl Sagan

  Long, Tree, Savannah

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.87, Ballantine Books

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• I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Fiction, Advantage

  Carl Sagan, Tom Head (2006). “Conversations with Carl Sagan”, p.47, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.

  Carl Sagan

  Other Worlds, Ends, Solar System

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.344, Ballantine Books

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• The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Inability, Trial And Error

  "Cosmos".

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• The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

  Carl Sagan

  Cosmos

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• In our time, we have sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century of dreams!

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Mars, Sand

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.129, Ballantine Books

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• Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Aristocracy, Earth, Monkeys

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• Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

  Carl Sagan

  Latin

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.218, Penguin

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• Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria, the Centre of science and learning in the ancient world. Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else, whom he called barbarians and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. He thought it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples. But Erathosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism, he believed there was good and bad in every nation.

  Carl Sagan

  Greek, Humanity, Library

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]". TV series, 1990.

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• The universe forces those who live in it to understand it.

  Carl Sagan

  Force, Regularity, Predictability

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.19, Ballantine Books

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• We are the children equally of the Sky and the Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Sky, Earth

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.348, Ballantine Books

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• ...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for religions and nations to sell. This is not an issue of which we might anticipate widespread skepticism. People will want to believe it, even if the evidence is meager to nil... compelling testimony ... provides that our personality, character, memory ... resides in the matter of the brain, it is easy not to focus on it, to find ways to evade the weight of the evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Spiritual, Memories, Believe

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• We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Space, Atoms

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• Quickly capping 363 oil well fires in a war zone is impossible. The fires would burn out of control until they put themselves out... The resulting soot might well stretch over all of South Asia... It could be carried around the world... [and] the consequences could be dire. Beneath such a pall sunlight would be dimmed, temperatures lowered and droughts more frequent. Spring and summer frosts may be expected... This endangerment of the food supplies... appears to be likely enough that it should affect the war plans.

  Carl Sagan

  Summer, Spring, War

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• One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

  Carl Sagan

  Media, People, Stupidity

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• If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.

  Carl Sagan

  Winter, Science, Nuclear

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