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I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float, like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

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
Well
Cosmos
Believe
Dust
Like
Sky
Depends
Morning
Mote
Future
Powerfully
Understand
Float
Wells
Floats

More quotes by Carl Sagan

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Don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience.
Carl Sagan
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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.
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The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.
Carl Sagan
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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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We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
Carl Sagan
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An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.
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The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
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Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).
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The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
Carl Sagan
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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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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.
Carl Sagan
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A stars rich in europium of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique. It amazes me still. Auguste Comte picked a particularly unfortunate example.
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Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
Carl Sagan
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UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.
Carl Sagan
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Discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life: I would love it even if they were short, sullen, grumpy and sexually obsessed. But there just isn't any good evidence.
Carl Sagan
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If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
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We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
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If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan
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The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
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We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.
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