Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 7

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The difference between physics and metaphysics is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

Carl Sagan

Differences, Physics, Laboratory

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.64, Ballantine Books

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But I could be wrong.

Carl Sagan

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When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

Carl Sagan

Inspirational, Educational, Knowledge

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Not all birds can fly. What separates the flyers from the walkers is the ability to take off.

Carl Sagan

Bird, Aviation, Flyers

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Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Running, Humble, Long Ago

Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.104, Ballantine Books

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It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.

Carl Sagan

Vastness, Consciousness, Creatures

Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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Science is not perfect. It's often misused; it's only a tool, but it's the best tool we have. Self-correcting , ever changing, applicable to everything: with this tool, we vanquish the impossible.

Carl Sagan

Self, Perfect, Tools

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A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.

Carl Sagan

Lonely, War, Ocean

"Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 13: "Who Speaks for Earth?", 1990.

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A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.

Carl Sagan

Biblical, Thinking, Years

"Cosmos". Book by Carl Sagan (p . 213 -214),

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The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

Carl Sagan

Memories, Fall, Voice

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, there's a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more 'numinous' than the Ressurection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don't they?

Carl Sagan

Couple, Lying, Reading

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Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

Carl Sagan

Reading, Writing, Cosmos

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.305, Ballantine Books

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It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

Carl Sagan

Motivational, Learning, Humility

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In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question everything and to give a fair hearing to everything?

Carl Sagan

Giving, Hearing, Willing

Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.195, Penguin

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Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other, that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable. What is necessary is to reduce the matches and to clean up the gasoline.

Carl Sagan

Science, Two, Enemy

During a panel discussion in ABC News Viewpoint following the TV movie "The Day After", November 20, 1983.

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We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.

Carl Sagan

Rocks, Humanity, World

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Recent research shows that many children without enough to eat wind up with diminished capacity to understand and learn (“cognitive impairment” ). Children don't have to be starving for this to happen. Even mild undernourishment — the kind most common among poor people in America — can do it.

Carl Sagan

Children, Wind, America

"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".

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And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.

Carl Sagan

Cells, Hundred, Made

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.51, Ballantine Books

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The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.

Carl Sagan

Home, Science, Understanding

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

Carl Sagan

Kindness, Fear, Real

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.298, Ballantine Books

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A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.

Carl Sagan

Inspirational, Funny, Reading

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.305, Ballantine Books

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The sacred truth of science is that there are no sacred truths.

Carl Sagan

Sacred

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Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

Carl Sagan

Smart, Stupid, Equal

Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.310, Ballantine Books

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But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

Carl Sagan

Able, Imagine, Subtle

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.422, Ballantine Books

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There is never only ONE of anything in nature.

Carl Sagan

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Born: November 9, 1934
Died: December 20, 1996
Occupation: Astronomer
Cite this Page: Citation

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