Quote

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.

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
Seeking
Challenging
Residual
Highest
Established
Proposing
Challenges
Contradiction
Explanations
Small
Alternatives
Contradictions
Belief
Explanation
Heresy
Give
Beliefs
Persistent
Prodding
Giving
Rewards
Encouraging
Disprove
Errors
Alternative
Convincingly

More quotes by Carl Sagan

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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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The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
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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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We invest far off places with a certain romance... Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game none of them lasts for ever. Your own life, or your bands, or even your species - might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands, and new worlds.
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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 old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work.
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Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species.
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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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Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.
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A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.
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Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.
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It seems madness to say, 'We're worried that they're going to become addicted to marijuana' -- there's no evidence whatever that it's an addictive drug, but even if it were, these people are dying, what are we saving them from?
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Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.
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We are made of starstuff.
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In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.
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First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
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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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Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.
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If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.
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We can't help it. Life looks for life.
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