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Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan Quotes

Astronomer

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Famous Carl Sagan Quotes

“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.”

WorldYearsLongIdeasBigsRunningAgeEarthNightNumbersHalfSunModernOrdinaryInfiniteBillionsScalesCosmosCyclesDedicatedHinduismImmenseRebirthBangsDay And NightCosmologyGreat FaithBrahmaHindu ReligionOrdinary DaysDeath And Rebirth
Author:Carl Sagan
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“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.”

ThinkingEarthUniverseCompassionBloodStageHumilityMastersGloryRiversHatredCornersEndlessCrueltyTriumphCosmosCosmicPaleMisunderstandingArenaEmperorFractionsDotsMomentaryVastnessFerventCosmic ConsciousnessPale Blue DotAcross The UniverseAstronomy And UniversePixels
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.”

PeopleIfsHumansWholeCharacterEarthTogetherCommunityGroupsAwarenessBuildingPlanetsMembersLoyaltyBackgroundsCosmosHuman HistoryCharacter BuildingPlanet EarthDivergentPale Blue Dot
Book:Cosmos
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“There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

WorldHumansEarthSpaceTinyAstronomyFollyCosmosPaleDemonstrationConceitEarth DayVastnessCosmic ConsciousnessBeautiful EarthEarth And SkyPale Blue DotInspirational EarthAcross The UniverseMy SpaceAstronomy And UniverseHuman Folly
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.”

KnowsYearsFirstsMadeSelfHappensEarthChoicesUniverseNextSpaceDependsEvolutionOceanDestructionBillionsLegacyCosmosHeritageMeaninglessCosmicTime And SpaceHere And NowAwakenedSelf DestructionVastness
Author:Carl Sagan
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“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. ... Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.”

YearsFirstsMayMadeWarFactsProblemSeemsAgeEarthPoliticalSocialSpaceCenturyPlanetsCurrentsContactRememberedThirtyCosmosThirty YearsEmbeddedStar Gazing
Author:Carl Sagan
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“I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said "billion" many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said "billions and billions." For one thing, it's too imprecise. How many billions are "billions and billions"? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? "Billions and billions" is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked-and sure enough, I never said it.”

PeopleSaidHardEnoughBigsStarsNumbersOne ThingHonestTelevisionHundredTwentiesSeriesBillionsAstronomyGreat MenCosmosVagueGalaxyCosmology
Author:Carl Sagan
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“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience..... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

WorldHas BeensSaidMomentsCharacterHomeEarthDealsResponsibilityKnownBuildingBlueSpeciesAstronomyPreservesSettlingCosmosCherishPaleHarborsCharacter BuildingDotsHumblingVastnessPale Blue DotMigrateAstronomy And Universe
Book:Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
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“The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.”

MindHumansTeacherInspirePlanetsSpeciesLibraryInsightContributionCosmosCollectivesTireLibrarianBest TeacherHuman SpeciesPublic LibraryLibraries And LibrariansCollective Knowledge
Book:Cosmos
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“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things-from subatomic particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole.”

ThinkingWorldWayHumansMayMatterWholeBodyScienceSocialGoalCommunityConnectionsCosmosOrganismsParticlesPenetrateWay Of ThinkingConstituentsRegularityLiving OrganismsSubatomic Particles
Author:Carl Sagan
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