I can talk about my father in ordinary conversation without feeling more than the slightest pang of loss. But if I permit myself to remember him clos… - Carl Sagan

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I can talk about my father in ordinary conversation without feeling more than the slightest pang of loss. But if I permit myself to remember him closely — his sense of humor, say, or his passionate egalitarianism — the facade crumbles and I want to weep because he is gone. There is no question that language can almost free us of feeling. Perhaps that is one of its functions — to let us consider the world without in the process becoming entirely overwhelmed by feeling. If so, then the invention of language is simultaneously a blessing and a curse.

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About Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect will change the earth's climate system.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Carl Edward Sagan
Alternative Names: Sagan Carl E. Sagan Carl E Sagan C. E. Sagan C.E. Sagan C E Sagan C. Sagan C Sagan Sagan C Sagan C. Sagan C. E. Sagan CE
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Additional quotes by Carl Sagan

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. — T. H. Huxley, 1887 The

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