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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.

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
Song
Havens
Softly
Left
Materials
Advantages
Stills
Haven
Village
Still
Childhood
Calls
Even
Advantage
Nearly
Sedentary
Life
Generations
Material
Unfulfilled
Like
Cities
Forgotten
Villages
Open
Road
Edgy

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In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
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Those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
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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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Understanding is a kind of ecstasy
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I don't want to believe. I want to know.
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That kind of skeptical, questioning, don't accept what authority tells you attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.
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The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin.
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I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.
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A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.
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We live at a moment when our relationships to each other, and to all other beings with whom we share this planet, are up for grabs.
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It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us - but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.
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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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Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain.
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Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
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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?
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