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The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.
Carl Sagan
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer; there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
Carl Sagan
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The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
Carl Sagan
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The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.
Carl Sagan
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A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called leaves) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you.
Carl Sagan
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The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.
Carl Sagan
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Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.
Carl Sagan
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This vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe... has not been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially in no Western religions.
Carl Sagan
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If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It... prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intracacy?
Carl Sagan
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Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
Carl Sagan
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All my life, I've wondered about life beyond the earth. On those countless other planets that we think circle other suns, is there also life? Might the beings of other worlds resemble us, or would they be astonishingly different? What would they be made of? In the vast Milky Way galaxy, how common is what we call life? The nature of life on earth and the quest for life elsewhere are the two sides of the same question: the search for who we are.
Carl Sagan
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If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition.
Carl Sagan
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(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie Jurassic Park was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago-when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old.
Carl Sagan
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I hold that popularization of science is successful if, at first, it does no more than spark the sense of wonder.
Carl Sagan
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A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?
Carl Sagan
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This image of four spectra is taken from one of Huggins's publications.... You can see that the Comet Winnecke resembles olive oil more than it does Comet Brorsen.
Carl Sagan
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Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
Carl Sagan
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What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.
Carl Sagan
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There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surprises
Carl Sagan
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The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after.
Carl Sagan
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It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.
Carl Sagan
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In many myths, the one possibility the gods are most anxious about is that humans will discover some secret of immortality or even... attempt to stride the high heavens.... It's a little bit like the rich imposing poverty on the poor and then asking to be loved because of it.
Carl Sagan
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Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct.
Carl Sagan
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You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years," he said. "Think of it more as.....cultivated.
Carl Sagan
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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. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
Carl Sagan
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Quote of the day
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille
Carl Sagan
Born:
November 9, 1934
Died:
December 20, 1996
(aged 62)
Bio:
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer and popular science writer.
Known for:
Cosmos (1980)
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)
Contact (1985)
Most used words:
science
universe
earth
god
time
human
life
stars
species
cosmos
people
years
planet
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