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Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

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
Body
Way
Thinking
Skeptically
Interrogating
Knowledge
Universe
Science

More quotes by Carl Sagan

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We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.
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Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.
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Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.
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The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
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A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.
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Any sufficiently crisp question can be answered by a single binary digit-0 or 1, yes or no.
Carl Sagan
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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
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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.
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The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.
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Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities at most, there are experts.
Carl Sagan
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Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
Carl Sagan
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For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan
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I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?
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Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
Carl Sagan
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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.
Carl Sagan
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Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .
Carl Sagan
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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.
Carl Sagan
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We are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are made of star-stuff. There are pieces of star within us all.
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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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If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?
Carl Sagan