Quote

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.

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
Greatest
Trick
Books
Finish
Read
Tricks
Book
Library
Time
Lifetime
Percent
Tenth
Thousand
Contents
Week
Libraries

More quotes by Carl Sagan

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The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.
Carl Sagan
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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.
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The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
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We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.
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Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
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And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.
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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.
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We invest far off places with a certain romance... Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game none of them lasts for ever. Your own life, or your bands, or even your species - might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.
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We can always take but never give.
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Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
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We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.
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We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.
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Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.
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The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others.
Carl Sagan
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We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
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All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are scientifically illiterate. That's...the same fraction...of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War.
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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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The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.
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The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
Carl Sagan
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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.
Carl Sagan