Carl Sagan Quotes, Religious Quotes, Political Quotes

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

5 years ago

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Political Quotes

In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Discovery Quotes

Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Night Quotes

There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Thinking Quotes

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Men Quotes , Cosmos Quotes

We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Heart Quotes , Tree Quotes

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Song Quotes , Years Quotes

The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Wise Quotes , Discovery Quotes

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Greatness Quotes , Failing Quotes

Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Claims Quotes , Proof Quotes

A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religion Quotes , Generations Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Rocks Quotes , Humanity Quotes

After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Believe Quotes , Giving 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

There is a lurking fear that some things are not “meant" to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Keeping Secrets Quotes , Some Things Are Meant To Be Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Ocean 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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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , War Quotes , Earth Quotes

The Romans called the Christians atheists. Why? Well, the Christians had a god of sorts, but it wasn't a real god. They didn't believe in the divinity of apotheosized emperors or Olympian gods. They had a peculiar, different kind of god. So it was very easy to call people who believed in a different kind of god atheists. And that general sense that an atheist is anybody who doesn't believe exactly as I do prevails in our own time.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Christian Quotes , Atheist Quotes

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Love Quotes , Embarrassing Questions Quotes

And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Long Quotes , Tree Quotes