Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 5

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• When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according to their own level of consciousness, life gets a lot easier.
  Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

  Carl Sagan

  Mean, Deep Thought, Levels

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• In the deepest sense the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Moon, Extraterrestrial, Star Gazing

  Carl Sagan, Jerald F. TerHorst, Allan J. Mayer, Sharon S. McKern, Laurence J. Peter (1980). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”

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• Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

  Carl Sagan

  Education, Atheist, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.430, Ballantine Books

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• Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Believe, Mean

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.251, Simon and Schuster

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• We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?

  Carl Sagan

  Nuclear, Earth, Speak

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.357, Ballantine Books

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• Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

  Carl Sagan

  Challenges, Dogma, Sometimes

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.16, Ballantine Books

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• But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over.

  Carl Sagan

  Government, People, Political

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• 'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

  Carl Sagan

  Truth, Book, Opportunity

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

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• What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Two, Sound

  "Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1980.

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• Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .

  Carl Sagan

  Life, Race, Dna

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.467, Ballantine Books

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• An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Agnostic, There Is No God

  "A Tribute to Carl Sagan: The Sagan File" by Joel Achenbach, The Skeptic Magazine, Vol 13, No. 1, www.skeptic.com. 2006.

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• The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Doe, Spirituality

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.54, Ballantine Books

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• I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?

  Carl Sagan

  Christian, Wise, Atheist

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• The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Fall, Mean

  "Scientists & Their Gods". U.S. News & World Report, Vol. 111, 1991.

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• 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 something like that happened in politics or religion.

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Learning, Humility

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference in 1987. "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?" Book by Judson Poling, p. 30, 2003.

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• We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.

  Carl Sagan

  Smart, Pieces, Enough

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• Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Atoms, Matter

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.243, Ballantine Books

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• The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

  Carl Sagan

  June, July, August

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", 1990.

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• We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Technology, Information Society

  "Bringing Science Back to Earth". Interview with Anne Kalosh, Hemispheres (the magazine of United Airlines), October 1994.

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• When permitted to listen to alternative opinions and engage in substantive debate, people have been known to change their minds. It can happen.

  Carl Sagan

  People, Mind, Alternatives

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.550, Ballantine Books

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• We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think as well as we can. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. I believe we have an obligation to fight for life on Earth - not just for ourselves, but for all those, humans and others, who came before us, and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after.

  Carl Sagan

  Wise, Believe, Fighting

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.74, Ballantine Books

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• Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.

  Carl Sagan

  Teamwork, Mistake, Missing

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• Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

  Carl Sagan

  Claims, Proof, Extraordinary

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• Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Phoenix, Ashes

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• The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Ocean, Long

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", 1990.

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