Carl Sagan Quotes

Evolution often uses this strategy. Indeed, the standard evolutionary practice of increasing the amount of genetic information as organisms increase in complexity is accomplished by doubling part of the genetic material and then allowing the slow specialization of function of the redundant set.

Haldane imagined a far future when the stars have darkened and space is mainly filled with a cold thin gas. Nevertheless, if we wait long enough statistical fluctuations in the density of this gas will occur. Over immense periods of time the fluctuations will be sufficient to reconstitute a Universe something like our own. If the Universe is infinitely old, there will be an infinite number of such reconstitutions, Haldane pointed out.

The chiliasts made an atheist out of me.

Ady also warned of the danger that “the Nations [will] perish for lack of knowledge.” Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us — then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

Pre-scientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are. Field interrogation of informants from a different culture is not always easy.

The sword of science is double-edged. Its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility – more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

In the spring of 1974 about two years before the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars, I was at a meeting in England sponsored by the Royal Society of London to explore the question of how to search for extraterrestrial life. During a coffee break, I noticed that a much larger meeting was being held in an adjacent hall, which out of curiosity I entered. I soon realized that I was witnessing one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton. When at last he finished, there was a stirring ovation. Steven Hawking was a legend even then

Qlobal qızğın silahlanmanı dünyadan kənar və qərəzsiz müşahidəçiyə necə izah edə bilərdik? Ən son sabitliyi pozan tədqiqatlara- qatil peyklərə, dəstə silahlara, lazerlərə, neytron bombalara, qanadlı raketlərə, - və orta ölçüsü olan ölkə ilə müqayisə edilən ərazilərin yüzlərlə maketlərin arasında əsl qitələrarası ballistik raketlərin gizləndiyi təklif olunmuş poliqon transformasiyasına necə bəraət qazandırardıq? Hədəf almış on minlərlə döyüş başlıqlarının sağ qalma ehtimalımızı artırdığını cəsarət ilə iddia edə bilərdikmi? Yer kürəsinin kuratoruna hansı hesabatı verə bilərdik? Biz nüvə dövlətlərinin dəlillərini bilirik. Millətlərin adından kimin danışdığı bizə məlumdur. Bəs insan növünün adından kim danışır? Kim Yer kürəsinin adından danışır?

The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well, they must be far from civilization.

There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars.

Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been
attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.

It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

In all our searching the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning.