Carl Sagan Quotes, Caring Quotes, Thinking Quotes

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Caring Quotes , Thinking Quotes

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

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It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Death Quotes , Witty Quotes

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

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War is murder writ large.

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You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Agnostic Quotes

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)

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Errors Quotes , Inability Quotes

Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.

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That kind of skeptical, questioning, "don't accept what authority tells you" attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Attitude Quotes , Thinking Quotes

I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.

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The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

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The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Light Quotes , Flames 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

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Doe Quotes

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.)

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But down deep, at the molecular heart of life we're essentially identical to trees.

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In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Christian Quotes , Atheist Quotes

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Self Quotes

What does it mean for a civilisation to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilisation is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilisation millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Mean Quotes , Technology Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Atheist Quotes