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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

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Carl Sagan
Age: 62 †
Born: 1934
Born: November 9
Died: 1996
Died: December 20
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Cosmologist
Naturalist
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Physicist
Planetary Scientist
Science Communicator
Brooklyn
New York
Carl Edward Sagan
Sagan
Carl E. Sagan
Carl E Sagan
C. E. Sagan
C.E. Sagan
C E Sagan
C. Sagan
C Sagan
Sagan C
Sagan C.
Sagan C. E.
Sagan CE
Freethinker
Stuff
Humorous
Skepticism
Agnosticism
Death
Atheist
Persist
Cosmology
Better
Atheism
Cosmos
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Really
However
Grasp
Reassuring
Dying
Delusion
Religion
Thrive
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Universe
Satisfying
Agnostic
Science
Witty
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More quotes by Carl Sagan

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It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology.
Carl Sagan
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If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.
Carl Sagan
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And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.
Carl Sagan
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They (i. e., the Pythagoreans) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors.
Carl Sagan
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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Carl Sagan
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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
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Human beings grew up in forests we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.
Carl Sagan
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Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.
Carl Sagan
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It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
Carl Sagan
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So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations.
Carl Sagan
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Because men, compared to male chimps, have such relatively small testicles (large testicles indicate a species where many males mate, one after the other, with the same female), we might guess that promiscuous societies were uncommon in the immediate human past.
Carl Sagan
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We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.
Carl Sagan
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Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
Carl Sagan
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There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.
Carl Sagan
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It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us - but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.
Carl Sagan
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Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
Carl Sagan
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One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.
Carl Sagan
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If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our survival.
Carl Sagan
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We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
Carl Sagan
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Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.
Carl Sagan