Carl Sagan Quotes, Religious Quotes, Stars Quotes

I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars.... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Stars Quotes

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Running Quotes , Responsibility Quotes

If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Earth Quotes , Ruins Quotes

If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks the blanket off.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Winter Quotes , Science Quotes

Thus the recent rapid evolution of human intelligence is not only the cause of but also the only conceivable solution to the many serious problems that beset us.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Causes Quotes , Serious 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

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stupid Quotes , Believe Quotes

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Simple Quotes , Self Quotes

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Groups Quotes , Cosmos Quotes

There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Dna Quotes , Atoms Quotes

we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers

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

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Time Quotes

The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Honesty Quotes , Ideas Quotes

There are lots of ways to communicate what we know, but few ways to communicate what we feel. Music is one way to communicate emotions.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Music Quotes , Way Quotes

As agonizing a disease as cancer is, I do not think it can be said that our civilization is threatened by it. ... But a very plausible case can be made that our civilization is fundamentally threatened by the lack of adequate fertility control. Exponential increases of population will dominate any arithmetic increases, even those brought about by heroic technological initiatives, in the availability of food and resources, as Malthus long ago realized.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Science 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

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Self Quotes , Perfect Quotes

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Ideas Quotes

Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Pain Quotes

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Change Quotes , Science Quotes