Carl Sagan Quotes, Moon Quotes, Space Quotes

A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Moon Quotes , Space Quotes

Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Aristocracy Quotes , Earth Quotes

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Life Quotes , Art Quotes

Your god is too small for my universe.

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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

The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Brain Quotes , Connections Quotes

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Night Quotes

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Responsibility Quotes , Sea Quotes

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence

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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

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Religion Quotes

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Religion Quotes

It is clear that the nations of the world now can only rise and fall together. It is not a question of one nation winning at the expense of another. We must all help one another or all perish together.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Peace Quotes , Fall Quotes

UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Interesting Quotes , Cases 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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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Rocks Quotes

You mean am I for it or against it? You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on Vega, and you want to make sure I give the right answer? Okay. Overpopulation is why I'm in favor of homosexuality and a celibate clergy. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Mean Quotes , Thinking Quotes

I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

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We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Discovery Quotes , Self Quotes

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Suicidal Quotes , Science Quotes