Quote

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

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
Way
Mysticism
Superstitions
Pretend
Call
Misapplied
Knowledge
Bulwark
Religion
Bluff
Business
Bluffs
Science
Superstition

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Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs.
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That kind of skeptical, questioning, don't accept what authority tells you attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.
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Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
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Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.
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That we can now think of no mechanism for astrology is relevant but unconvincing. No mechanism was known, for example, for continental drift when it was proposed by Wegener. Nevertheless, we see that Wegener was right, and those who objected on the grounds of unavailable mechanism were wrong.
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The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.
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A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.
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There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.
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Scientists make mistakes. Accordingly, it is the job of the scientist to recognize our weakness, to examine the widest range of opinions, to be ruthlessly self-critical. Science is a collective enterprise with the error-correction machinery often running smoothly.
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The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.
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Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.
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Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
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There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
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If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
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What's the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses.
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The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
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I don?t feel rejected by the sky. I?m a part of it- tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity.
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We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.
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The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin.
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It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, there's a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopediea Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more 'numinous' than the Ressurection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don't they?
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