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It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not.

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
Responsibility
Suppress
Knowledge
Awkward
Science
Scientists
Power
Bother
May
Decide
Scientist
Matter
Smart
Enough
Pieces
Permissible
Never

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Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
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Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
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We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
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Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.
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It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.
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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.
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Understanding is a kind of ecstasy
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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.
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And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.
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If the press descended, the science would surely suffer.
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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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The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
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we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers
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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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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.
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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.
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For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.
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It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
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You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.
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Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.
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