Carl Sagan Quotes, Mistake Quotes, Past Quotes

Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Past Quotes

It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.

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You have to know the past to understand the present.

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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

What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Hands Quotes , Ideas Quotes

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

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The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Errors Quotes

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.

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Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

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The illegality of cannabis is outrageous.

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

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Running Quotes , Civilization Quotes

Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success.

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

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We are the custodians of life's meaning.

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If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Superstitions Quotes

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

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My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , God Quotes , Passion Quotes

We invest far off places with a certain romance... Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game; none of them lasts for ever. Your own life, or your bands, or even your species - might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Summer Quotes , Winter Quotes

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing Quotes

There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Design Quotes , Seems Quotes