Carl Sagan Quotes, Self Esteem Quotes, Past Quotes

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Self Esteem Quotes , Past Quotes

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Fun Quotes , Science Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Fire Quotes

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

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One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Education Quotes , Children Quotes

What's the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Analysis Quotes , Littles Quotes

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Order Quotes , Opposites Quotes

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Freedom Quotes , Science Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Children Quotes , Believe Quotes

So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Our World Quotes , Expectations Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Perspective Quotes , Vision Quotes

Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Errors Quotes , Perception Quotes

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Taken Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Hatred Quotes , Vision Quotes

Science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations. When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way - seeing for them also.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , New Horizons Quotes , Generations Quotes

At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Home Quotes , Heart Quotes

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Science Quotes

I'm only a four-dimensional creature. Haven't got a clue how to visualise infinity. Even Einstein hadn't. I know because I asked him

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Four Quotes , Infinity Quotes

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Community Quotes

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stupid Quotes , Believe Quotes