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“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Life #Art #Motivation
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“If you look at Earth from space you see a dot, that's here. That's home. That's us. It underscores the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Home #Responsibility #Blue
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“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Positive #Waiting #Incredibles
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“The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Wisdom #Understanding #Brain
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“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Motivational #Science #Technology
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“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Death #Witty #Atheist
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“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Atheist #Mean #Science
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“Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?”
-- Carl Sagan
#Impact
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“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Love #Inspirational #Perspective
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“The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Science #Doe #Spirituality
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“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
-- Carl Sagan
#God #Spiritual #Philosophy
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“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Education #Atheist #Thinking
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“Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Stars #Children #Sun
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“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Love #Inspirational #Life
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“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Knowledge #Science #Thinking
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“For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, ‘We came in peace for all Mankind.’ As the United States was dropping seven and a half megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Moon #Rocks #Humanity
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“Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Pain #Regret #Animal
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“Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Science #Thinking #People
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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. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Inspirational #Funny #Book
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“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Stars #Dna #Blood
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“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Ambition #Science #Perfect
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“Every star may be a sun to someone.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Stars #May #Sun
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“We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Respect #Thinking #Intelligent
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“My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings - what we sometimes call "mind" - are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Brain #Mind #Fundamentals
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“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Children #Kids #Science
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“we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers”
-- Carl Sagan
#Patience #Our World #Depth
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“A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Lonely #War #Ocean
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“In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Kindness #Fear #Real
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“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Destruction #Deserve
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“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
-- Carl Sagan
#Book #Magic #Proof
