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If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

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
Tell
Grabs
Next
Skeptical
Political
Questions
True
Authority
Able
Along
Interrogate
Something
Asks
Charlatan
Religious
Rambling
Comes
Charlatans

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The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
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The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality, but we are connected not in the trivial ways that astrology promises, but in the deepest ways.
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Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
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You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.
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Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse
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The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.
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We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.
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We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
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The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they've made a thorough mess of it. I mean, we're in deep trouble.
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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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Thus the recent rapid evolution of human intelligence is not only the cause of but also the only conceivable solution to the many serious problems that beset us.
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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.
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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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Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).
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Religions contradict one another-on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods.
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We are the custodians of life's meaning.
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Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by 'reality' or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
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Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.
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If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves.
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