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Quote by Carl Sagan

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This book delves into the idea of first contact with an alien civilization, examining the psychological, cultural, and philosophical effects on humanity. more

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Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, author, and science communicator, born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. He is renowned for his profound research into the cosmos and his dedication to popularizing science. Sagan proposed numerous theories about the origin of the universe and life, and he made complex scientific knowledge accessible to the public with his unique perspective and clear, engaging writing style. more

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“The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The first part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been horses stabled in the barn they would have stamped and champed and broken it to pieces. If there had been a crowd of guests, even a handful of guests bedded down for the night, their restless breathing and mingled snores would have gently thawed the silence like a warm spring wind. If there had been music…but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a man huddled in his deep, sweet-smelling bed. Motionless, waiting for sleep, he lay wide-eyed in the dark. In doing this he added a small, frightened silence to the larger, hollow one. They made an alloy of sorts, a harmony. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the thick stone walls of the empty taproom and in the flat, grey metal of the sword that hung behind the bar. It was in the dim candlelight that filled an upstairs room with dancing shadows. It was in the mad pattern of a crumpled memoir that lay fallen and un-forgotten atop the desk. And it was in the hands of the man who sat there, pointedly ignoring the pages he had written and discarded long ago. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the weary calm that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

Silence
Book:The Name of the Wind
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“He suddenly felt a pain that was as violent as if it were real. Existence, similar to the stucco angel whose extremities meet in a curved mirror, comes back, almost by necessity, to a state of radicality and silence. The ideal existence is the one that lasts long enough to come back to this point of origin. Those who forge straight ahead will never know where they have come from.”

ExistenceSilenceSimulationRadicality
Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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