"Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path."
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Quote collection
Carl Sagan quotes (page 13 of 30)
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read."
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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 science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
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"But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine."
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"If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?"
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"I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed."
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"The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps."
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"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."
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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
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"Demon mean knowledge in Greek, especially about the material world. Science means knowledge in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further"
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"If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?"
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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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"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
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"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena."
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"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."
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"There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity"
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"What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones."
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"A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
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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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"One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition."
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