Carl Sagan Quotes, Errors Quotes, Inability 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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In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.

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One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.

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Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?

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Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn't any good evidence.

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I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Who We Are Quotes

Every time you look up at the sky, every one of those points of light is a reminder that fusion power is extractable from hydrogen and other light elements, and it is an everyday reality throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Reality Quotes , Light Quotes

When permitted to listen to alternative opinions and engage in substantive debate, people have been known to change their minds. It can happen.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , People Quotes , Mind Quotes

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Cells Quotes , Triumph 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

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

All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star stuff.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Blood Quotes

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. 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

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Media Quotes

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.

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Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

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When a honeybee dies it releases a death pheromone, a characteristic odour that signals the survivors to remove it from the hive. The corpse is promptly pushed and tugged out of the hive. The death pheromone is oleic acid. What happens if a live bee is dabbed with a drop of oleic acid? Then no matter how strapping and vigourous it might be, it is carried kicking and screaming out of the hive.

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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

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Survival Quotes , Earth Quotes

The Hindu religion is the only of the World's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Numbers Quotes