Quote

Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome.

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
Reason
Talked
Propensities
Sometimes
Surely
Hardwired
Ease
Arisen
Cool
Newly
Intelligence
Disguised
Sweet
Propensity
Light
Overwhelmed
Subverted
Truth
Imperfect
Worrisome

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A still more glorious dawn awaits / not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise / a morning filled with 400 billion suns / the rising of the milky way
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The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal
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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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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.
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The Big Bang is our modern scientific creation myth. It comes from the same human need to solve the cosmological riddle [Where did the universe come from?]
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Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.
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Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.
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You mustn't think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn't been that for billions of years, he said. Think of it more as... ..cultivated.
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She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
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If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science.
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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.
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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.
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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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We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.
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My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.
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Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you.
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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.
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It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
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Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
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The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
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