Quote

The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.

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
Making
Tool
Culture
Morality
Often
Argument
Reason
Animals
Humans
Tools
Many
Goes
Claimed
Animal
Grounds
Language
Uniqueness

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I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.
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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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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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Science is not only compatible with spirituality it is a profound source of spirituality.
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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
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Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.
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That we can now think of no mechanism for astrology is relevant but unconvincing. No mechanism was known, for example, for continental drift when it was proposed by Wegener. Nevertheless, we see that Wegener was right, and those who objected on the grounds of unavailable mechanism were wrong.
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So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations.
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The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.
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It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo 's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.
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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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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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When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
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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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Science is only a Latin word for knowledge
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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.
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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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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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To live in the hearts of others is to never die in those we leave behind.
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What an astonishing thing a book is.
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