Carl Sagan Quotes, Religious Quotes, Science Quotes

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

5 years ago

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Science 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

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Space Quotes , Overcoming Quotes

Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Skins Quotes

...the idea of a spiritual part of our nature that survives death, the notion of an afterlife, ought to be easy for religions and nations to sell. This is not an issue of which we might anticipate widespread skepticism. People will want to believe it, even if the evidence is meager to nil... compelling testimony ... provides that our personality, character, memory ... resides in the matter of the brain, it is easy not to focus on it, to find ways to evade the weight of the evidence.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Memories Quotes

I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for the future, can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Civilization Quotes

Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Children Quotes , Cutting Quotes

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Fiction Quotes

.. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Blood Quotes

Religions contradict one another-on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Issues Quotes

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Song Quotes , Years 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're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Childhood Quotes

Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth... then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Perfect Days Quotes

Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Phoenix Quotes

A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Morning Quotes , Sunrise Quotes

The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Song Quotes , Childhood Quotes

He sought a way to preserve the past. John Hershel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel.... a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it... photography. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. This man is staring at us from across the centuries, a ghost preserved by light.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Photography Quotes , Memories Quotes

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Doe Quotes , Pseudoscience Quotes

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Truth Quotes , Ignorance Quotes