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Carl Sagan Quotes - Page 4

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When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according to their own level of consciousness, life gets a lot easier. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both

When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according to their own level of consciousness, life gets a lot easier. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Mean, Deep Thought, Levels

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

Inspirational, Motivational, Atheist

"President Obama Quotes Carl Sagan at Rutgers: 'Embrace What is True Rather Than What Feels Good'" by Hemant Mehta, www.patheos.com. May 15, 2016.

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.

Stars, Children, Sun

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.

Atheist, Agnostic, There Is No God

"A Tribute to Carl Sagan: The Sagan File" by Joel Achenbach, The Skeptic Magazine, Vol 13, No. 1, www.skeptic.com. 2006.

Valid criticism does you a favor.

Criticism, Doe, Favors

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.57, Ballantine Books

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Knowledge, Science, Thinking

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.15, Ballantine Books

Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.

Fate, Rivers, Air

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Motivational, Education, Ignorance

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.49, Ballantine Books

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Ignorance, Media, Sound

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.49, Ballantine Books

Some racists still reject the plain testimony written in the DNA that all the races are not only human but nearly indistinguishable. . . .

Life, Race, Dna

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.467, Ballantine Books

We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.

Atheist, Children, Teaching

Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.434, Ballantine Books

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.

Dream, Spiritual, Atheist

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?

Christian, Wise, Atheist

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.

Rights, Mind, Church

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.552, Ballantine Books

We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think as well as we can. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. I believe we have an obligation to fight for life on Earth - not just for ourselves, but for all those, humans and others, who came before us, and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after.

Wise, Believe, Fighting

Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.74, Ballantine Books

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

June, July, August

"Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", 1990.

The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.

Running, Night, Ideas

"Cosmos". Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.

Truth, Ignorance, People

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.

Challenges, Dogma, Sometimes

Carl Sagan (2011). “Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, p.16, Ballantine Books

An organism at war with itself is doomed.

War, Doomed, Organisms

"Cosmos". TV Mini-Series, www.imdb.com. 1980.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Atheist, Science, Ideas

"Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 14, p. 244, 1985.

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

Science, Civilization

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Science, Doe, Spirituality

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.54, Ballantine Books

There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.

Stars, Thinking, May

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

Atheist, Fall, Mean

"Scientists & Their Gods". U.S. News & World Report, Vol. 111, 1991.

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