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  • Carl Sagan Quotes   592
  • If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Past Quotes , Ideas 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. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Lonely Quotes , War 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Honesty Quotes , Ideas Quotes
  • We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Space 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Simple Quotes , Self 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Past Quotes
  • What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Believe Quotes , Two Quotes