Carl Sagan Quotes, Science Quotes, Thinking Quotes

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Thinking Quotes

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Discovery Quotes , Innovation Quotes

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Motivational Quotes , Education Quotes

Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Errors Quotes , Perception 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

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

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

We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Journey Quotes

If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Believe Quotes , Mars Quotes

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Science Quotes

Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Notebook Quotes , Motivation Quotes

I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I'd like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Thinking Quotes

While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , America 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

Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Brave Quotes , Enough Quotes

The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Rights Quotes , Mind Quotes

By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Space Quotes , Bangs Quotes

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Hands Quotes

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Dream Quotes , Spiritual Quotes