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We Live In A Vast And Awesome Universe In Which, Daily, Suns Are Made And Worlds Destroyed, Where Humanity Clings To An Obscure Clod Of Rock.
-Carl Sagan
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We Live In A

Carl Sagan
...
We Live In A Vast And Awesome Universe In Which, Daily, Suns Are Made And Worlds Destroyed, Where Humanity Clings To An Obscure Clod Of Rock.

Understanding the Quote: "we live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns..."

This quote by Carl Sagan reflects deeply on the theme of rocks. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Rocks, Humanity, World, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Carl Sagan interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan is celebrated for insightful thoughts on rocks and humanity. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Rocks
Humanity
World
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We On Earth Have Just Awakened To The Great Oceans Of Space And Time From Which We Have Emerged.
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Your Religion Assumes That People Are Children And Need A Boogeyman So They'll Behave. You Want People To Believe In God So They'll Obey The Law. That's The Only Means That Occurs To You: A Strict Secular Police Force, And The Threat Of Punishment By An All-seeing God For Whatever The Police Overlook. You Sell Human Beings Short.
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The Vast Distances That Separate The Stars Are Providential. Beings And Worlds Are Quarantined From One Another. The Quarantine Is Lifted Only For Those With Sufficient Self-knowledge And Judgment To Have Safely Traveled From Star To Star.
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Even Through Your Hardest Days, Remember We Are All Made Of Stardust.
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Science Is Far From A Perfect Instrument Of Knowledge. It's Just The Best We Have.
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The Lifetime Of A Human Being Is Measured By Decades, The Lifetime Of The Sun Is A Hundred Million Times Longer. Compared To A Star, We Are Like Mayflies, Fleeting Ephemeral Creatures Who Live Out Their Lives In The Course Of A Single Day.
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For All Its Material Advantages, The Sedentary Life Has Left Us Edgy, Unfulfilled, Even After 400 Generations In Villages And Cities, We Haven't Forgotten: The Open Road Still Softly Calls Like A Nearly Forgotten Song Of Childhood.
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There Is A Report That Says That Kids Who Watch Violent Tv Programs Tend To Be More Violent When They Grow Up. But Did The Tv Cause The Violence, Or Do Violent Children Preferentially Enjoy Watching Violent Programs?
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This Oak Tree And Me, We're Made Of The Same Stuff.
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Every Time You Look Up At The Sky, Every One Of Those Points Of Light Is A Reminder That Fusion Power Is Extractable From Hydrogen And Other Light Elements, And It Is An Everyday Reality Throughout The Milky Way Galaxy.
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One Of The Great Commandments Of Science Is, 'mistrust Arguments From Authority'. (scientists, Being Primates, And Thus Given To Dominance Hierarchies, Of Course Do Not Always Follow This Commandment.)
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We Are Rare And Precious Because We Are Alive, Because We Can Think As Well As We Can. We Are Privileged To Influence And Perhaps Control Our Future. I Believe We Have An Obligation To Fight For Life On Earth - Not Just For Ourselves, But For All Those, Humans And Others, Who Came Before Us, And To Whom We Are Beholden, And For All Those Who, If We Are Wise Enough, Will Come After.
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We Are Made Of Starstuff.
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We Are Made Of Stellar Ash. Our Origin And Evolution Have Been Tied To Distant Cosmic Events. The Exploration Of The Cosmos Is A Voyage Of Self-discovery.
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Our Passion For Learning ... Is Our Tool For Survival.
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The Idea That God Is An Oversized White Male With A Flowing Beard, Who Sits In The Sky And Tallies The Fall Of Every Sparrow Is Ludicrous. But If By 'god,' One Means The Set Of Physical Laws That Govern The Universe, Then Clearly There Is Such A God. This God Is Emotionally Unsatisfying... It Does Not Make Much Sense To Pray To The Law Of Gravity.
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Science Is A Collaborative Enterprise, Spanning The Generations. When It Permits Us To See The Far Side Of Some New Horizon, We Remember Those Who Prepared The Way - Seeing For Them Also.
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Not All Birds Can Fly. What Separates The Flyers From The Walkers Is The Ability To Take Off.
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Teller Contended, Not Implausibly, That Hydrogen Bombs Keep The Peace, Or At Least Prevent Thermonuclear War, Because The Consequences Of Warfare Between Nuclear Powers Are Now Too Dangerous. We Haven't Had A Nuclear War Yet, Have We? But All Such Arguments Assume That The Nuclear-armed Nations Are And Always Will Be, Without Exception, Rational Actors, And That Bouts Of Anger And Revenge And Madness Will Never Overtake Their Leaders (or Military And Secret Police Officers In Charge Of Nuclear Weapons). In The Century Of Hitler And Stalin, This Seems Ingenuous.
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If We're Capable Of Conjuring Up Terrifying Monsters In Childhood, Why Shouldn't Some Of Us, At Least On Occasion, Be Able To Fantasize Something Similar, Something Truly Horrifying, A Shared Delusion, As Adults?
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Not All Bits Have Equal Value.
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You Are Worth About 3 Dollars Worth In Chemicals.
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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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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.
Thinking
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The Surface Of The Earth Is The Shore Of The Cosmic Ocean. From It We Have Learned Most Of What We Know. Recently, We Have Waded A Little Out To Sea, Enough To Dampen Our Toes Or, At Most, Wet Our Ankles. The Water Seems Inviting. The Ocean Calls.
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We Live On A Hunk Of Rock And Metal That Circles A Humdrum Star That Is One Of 400 Billion Other Stars That Make Up The Milky Way Galaxy Which Is One Of Billions Of Other Galaxies Which Make Up A Universe Which May Be One Of A Very Large Number, Perhaps An Infinite Number, Of Other Universes. That Is A Perspective On Human Life And Our Culture That Is Well Worth Pondering.
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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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The Method Of Science Is Tried And True. It Is Not Perfect, It's Just The Best We Have. And To Abandon It, With Its Skeptical Protocols, Is The Pathway To A Dark Age.
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The Dumbing Down Of America Is Evident In The Slow Decay Of Substantive Content, A Kind Of Celebration Of Ignorance.
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We Are The Custodians Of Life's Meaning.
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If We Are To Survive, Our Loyalties Must Be Broadened Further, To Include The Whole Human Community, The Entire Planet Earth.
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Books Are Key To Understanding The World And Participating In A Democratic Society.
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Any Faith That Admires Truth, That Strives To Know God, Must Be Brave Enough To Accommodate The Universe.
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I Believe That Part Of What Propels Science Is The Thirst For Wonder. It's A Very Powerful Emotion. All Children Feel It. In A First Grade Classroom Everybody Feels It; In A Twelfth Grade Classroom Almost Nobody Feels It, Or At Least Acknowledges It. Something Happens Between First And Twelfth Grade, And It's Not Just Puberty. Not Only Do The Schools And The Media Not Teach Much Skepticism, There Is Also Little Encouragement Of This Stirring Sense Of Wonder. Science And Pseudoscience Both Arouse That Feeling. Poor Popularizations Of Science Establish An Ecological Niche For Pseudoscience.
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When You Look More Generally At Life On Earth, You Find That It Is All The Same Kind Of Life. There Are Not Many Different Kinds; There's Only One Kind. It Uses About Fifty Fundamental Biological Building Blocks, Organic Molecules.
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At The Extremes It Is Difficult To Distinguish Pseudoscience From Rigid, Doctrinaire Religion.
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In The Vastness Of Space And The Immensity Of Time, It Is My Joy To Share A Planet And An Epoch With Annie.
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The Brain Is Like A Muscle. When It Is In Use We Feel Very Good. Understanding Is Joyous.
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You Can Get Into A Habit Of Thought In Which You Enjoy Making Fun Of All Those Other People Who Don't See Things As Clearly As You Do. We Have To Guard Carefully Against It.
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Wisdom Lies In Understanding Our Limitations.
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We Were Wanderers From The Beginning.
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Knowing A Great Deal Is Not The Same As Being Smart; Intelligence Is Not Information Alone But Also Judgement, The Manner In Which Information Is Coordinated And Used.
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The Politicians And The Religious Leaders And The Weapons Scientists Have Been At It For A Long Time And They've Made A Thorough Mess Of It. I Mean, We're In Deep Trouble.
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If You Are Only Skeptical, Then No New Ideas Make It Through To You. You Become A Crotchety Old Person Convinced That Nonsense Is Ruling The World. (there Is, Of Course, Much Data To Support You.) But Every Now And Then, A New Idea Turns Out To Be On The Mark, Valid And Wonderful. If You Are Too Much In The Habit Of Being Skeptical About Everything, You Are Going To Miss Or Resent It, And Either Way You Will Be Standing In The Way Of Understanding And Progress.
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He Didn't Want To Believe. He Wanted To Know.
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In Exchange For Freedom Of Inquiry, Scientists Are Obliged To Explain Their Work.
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I Don't Want To Believe. I Want To Know.
Inspirational
Life
Religious
Once We Overcome Our Fear Of Being Tiny, We Find Ourselves On The Threshold Of A Vast And Awesome Universe That Utterly Dwarfs — In Time, In Space, And In Potential — The Tidy Anthropocentric Proscenium Of Our Ancestors.
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In Italy, The Inquisition Was Condemning People To Death Until The End Of The Eighteenth Century, And Inquisitional Torture Was Not Abolished In The Catholic Church Until 1816. The Last Bastion Of Support For The Reality Of Witchcraft And The Necessity Of Punishment Has Been The Christian Churches.
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When You Buy A Used Car, You Kick The Tires, You Look At The Odometer, You Open Up The Hood. If You Do Not Feel Yourself An Expert In Automobile Engines, You Bring A Friend Who Is. And You Do This With Something As Unimportant As An Automobile. But On The Issues Of The Transcendent, Of Ethics, Of Morals, Of The Origins Of The World, Of The Nature Of Human Beings, On Those Issues Should We Not Insist Upon At Least Equally Skeptical Scrutiny?
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After The Earth Dies, Some 5 Billion Years From Now, After It's Burned To A Crisp, Or Even Swallowed By The Sun, There Will Be Other Worlds And Stars And Galaxies Coming Into Being - And They Will Know Nothing Of A Place Once Called Earth.
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Years
Other Worlds
A Blade Of Grass Is A Commonplace On Earth; It Would Be A Miracle On Mars. Our Descendants On Mars Will Know The Value Of A Patch Of Green. And If A Blade Of Grass Is Priceless, What Is The Value Of A Human Being?
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The Illegality Of Cannabis Is Outrageous.
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Philosophers And Scientists Confidently Offer Up Traits Said To Be Uniquely Human, And The Monkeys And Apes Casually Knock Them Down -- Toppling The Pretension That Humans Constitute Some Sort Of Biological Aristocracy Among The Beings On Earth.
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Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, And Albert Einstein Made Serious Mistakes. But The Scientific Enterprise Arranges Things So That Teamwork Prevails: What One Of Us, Even The Most Brilliant Among Us, Misses, Another Of Us, Even Someone Much Less Celebrated And Capable, May Detect And Rectify.
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Other Things Being Equal, It Is Better To Be Smart Than To Be Stupid.
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There Is In This Universe Much Of What Seems To Be Design.
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I Would Suggest That Science Is, At Least In My Part, Informed Worship.
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An Extraterrestrial Being, Newly Arrived On Earth - Scrutinizing What We Mainly Present To Our Children In Television, Radio, Movies, Newspapers, Magazines, The Comics, And Many Books - Might Easily Conclude That We Are Intent On Teaching Them Murder, Rape, Cruelty, Superstition, Credulity, And Consumerism. We Keep At It, And Through Constant Repetition Many Of Them Finally Get It.
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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.
Humility
Thinking
Compassion
Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? . . . No Other Human Institution Comes Close.
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Finding The Occasional Straw Of Truth Awash In A Great Ocean Of Confusion And Bamboozle Requires Intelligence, Vigilance, Dedication, And Courage. But If We Don't Practice These Tough Habits Of Thought, We Cannot Hope To Solve The Truly Serious Problems That Face Us --- And We Risk Becoming A Nation Of Suckers, Up For Grabs By The Next Charlatan Who Comes Along.
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Ocean
Dedication
I’m Struck Again By The Irony That Spaceflight-conceived In The Cauldron Of Nationalist Rivalries And Hatreds-brings With It A Stunning Transnational Vision. You Spend Even A Little Time Contemplating The Earth From Orbit And The Most Deeply Engrained Nationalisms Begin To Erode. They Seem The Squabbles Of Mites On A Plum.
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I Don?t Feel Rejected By The Sky. I?m A Part Of It- Tiny, To Be Sure, But Everything Is Tiny Compared To That Overwhelming Immensity.
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Rejection
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If There Is Life, Then I Believe We Should Do Nothing To Disturb That Life. Mars Then, Belongs To The Martians, Even If They Are Microbes.
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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.
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Real Patriots Ask Questions.
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Books Are Like Seeds. They Can Lie Dormant For Centuries And Then Flower In The Most Unpromising Soil.
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Flower
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While Our Behavior Is Still Significantly Controlled By Our Genetic Inheritance, We Have, Through Our Brains, A Much Richer Opportunity To Blaze New Behavioral And Cultural Pathways On Short Timescales.
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Modern Darwinism Makes It Abundantly Clear That Many Less Ruthless Traits, Some Not Always Admired By Robber Barons And Fuhrers - Altruism, General Intelligence, Compassion - May Be The Key To Survival.
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Compassion
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You're An Interesting Species, An Interesting Mix. You're Capable Of Such Beautiful Dreams And Such Horrible Nightmares. You Feel So Lost, So Cut Off, So Alone, Only You're Not. See, In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.
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Dream
Cutting
We Are Star Stuff Which Has Taken Its Destiny Into Its Own Hands.
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Destiny
We Have Begun To Contemplate Our Origins: Starstuff Pondering The Stars; Organized Assemblages Of Ten Billion Billion Billion Atoms Considering The Evolution Of Atoms; Tracing The Long Journey By Which, Here At Least, Consciousness Arose.
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Long
Humans — Who Enslave, Castrate, Experiment On, And Fillet Other Animals — Have Had An Understandable Penchant For Pretending Animals Do Not Feel Pain. A Sharp Distinction Between Humans And 'animals' Is Essential If We Are To Bend Them To Our Will, Make Them Work For Us, Wear Them, Eat Them — Without Any Disquieting Tinges Of Guilt Or Regret. It Is Unseemly Of Us, Who Often Behave So Unfeelingly Toward Other Animals, To Contend That Only Humans Can Suffer. The Behavior Of Other Animals Renders Such Pretensions Specious. They Are Just Too Much Like Us.
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Regret
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Earth
Enthusiasm
Speak
Quickly Capping 363 Oil Well Fires In A War Zone Is Impossible. The Fires Would Burn Out Of Control Until They Put Themselves Out... The Resulting Soot Might Well Stretch Over All Of South Asia... It Could Be Carried Around The World... [and] The Consequences Could Be Dire. Beneath Such A Pall Sunlight Would Be Dimmed, Temperatures Lowered And Droughts More Frequent. Spring And Summer Frosts May Be Expected... This Endangerment Of The Food Supplies... Appears To Be Likely Enough That It Should Affect The War Plans.
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Spring
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A New Consciousness Is Developing Which Sees The Earth As A Single Organism And Recognizes That An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed. We Are One Planet. One Of The Great Revelations Of The Age Of Space Exploration Is The Image Of The Earth Finite And Lonely, Somehow Vulnerable, Bearing The Entire Human Species Through The Oceans Of Space And Time.
Lonely
War
Ocean
[science] Is Not Perfect. It Can Be Misused. It Is Only A Tool. But It Is By Far The Best Tool We Have, Self-correcting, Ongoing, Applicable To Everything. It Has Two Rules. First: There Are No Sacred Truths; All Assumptions Must Be Critically Examined; Arguments From Authority Are Worthless. Second: Whatever Is Inconsistent With The Facts Must Be Discarded Or Revised. ... The Obvious Is Sometimes False; The Unexpected Is Sometimes True.
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Self
Two
My Long-time View About Christianity Is That It Represents An Amalgam Of Two Seemingly Immiscible Parts-the Religion Of Jesus And The Religion Of Paul. Thomas Jefferson Attempted To Excise The Pauline Parts Of The New Testament. There Wasn't Much Left When He Was Done, But It Was An Inspiring Document.
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Views
Two
There Is Perhaps No Better A Demonstration Of The Folly Of Human Conceits Than This Distant Image Of Our Tiny World.
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Earth Day
Tiny
Our Loyalties Are To The Species And The Planet. We Speak For Earth. Our Obligation To Survive Is Owed Not Just To Ourselves But Also To That Cosmos, Ancient And Vast, From Which We Spring.
Loyalty
Spring
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The Cosmos Is All That Is Or Was Or Ever Will Be. Our Feeblest Contemplations Of The Cosmos Stir Us -- There Is A Tingling In The Spine, A Catch In The Voice, A Faint Sensation, As If A Distant Memory, Of Falling From A Height. We Know We Are Approaching The Greatest Of Mysteries.
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Fall
Voice
But The Fact That Some Geniuses Were Laughed At Does Not Imply That All Who Are Laughed At Are Geniuses. They Laughed At Columbus, They Laughed At Fulton, They Laughed At The Wright Brothers. But They Also Laughed At Bozo The Clown.
Funny
Brother
Laughter
My Deeply Held Belief Is That If A God Of Anything Like The Traditional Sort Exists, Our Curiosity And Intelligence Are Provided By Such A God. We Would Be Unappreciative Of Those Gifts (as Well As Unable To Take Such A Course Of Action) If We Suppressed Our Passion To Explore The Universe And Ourselves. On The Other Hand, If Such A Traditional God Does Not Exist, Our Curiosity And Our Intelligence Are The Essential Tools For Managing Our Survival. In Either Case, The Enterprise Of Knowledge Is Consistent With Both Science And Religion, And Is Essential For The Welfare Of The Human Species.
Passion
Hands
Survival
Maybe It's A Little Early. Maybe The Time Is Not Quite Yet. But Those Other Worlds - Promising Untold Opportunities - Beckon. Silently, They Orbit The Sun, Waiting.
Opportunity
Other Worlds
Waiting
An Atheist Is Someone Who Is Certain That God Does Not Exist, Someone Who Has Compelling Evidence Against The Existence Of God. I Know Of No Such Compelling Evidence. Because God Can Be Relegated To Remote Times And Places And To Ultimate Causes, We Would Have To Know A Great Deal More About The Universe Than We Do Now To Be Sure That No Such God Exists. To Be Certain Of The Existence Of God And To Be Certain Of The Nonexistence Of God Seem To Me To Be The Confident Extremes In A Subject So Riddled With Doubt And Uncertainty As To Inspire Very Little Confidence Indeed.
Atheist
Inspire
Doubt
A Celibate Clergy Is An Especially Good Idea, Because It Tends To Suppress Any Hereditary Propensity Toward Fanaticism.
Atheist
Science
Ideas
For All Our Conceits About Being The Center Of The Universe, We Live In A Routine Planet Of A Humdrum Star Stuck Away In An Obscure Corner ... On An Unexceptional Galaxy Which Is One Of About 100 Billion Galaxies. ... That Is The Fundamental Fact Of The Universe We Inhabit, And It Is Very Good For Us To Understand That.
Stars
Humility
Political
Imagine A Room Awash In Gasoline, And There Are Two Implacable Enemies In That Room. One Of Them Has Nine Thousand Matches. The Other Has Seven Thousand Matches. Each Of Them Is Concerned About Who's Ahead, Who's Stronger. Well That's The Kind Of Situation We Are Actually In. The Amount Of Weapons That Are Available To The United States And The Soviet Union Are So Bloated, So Grossly In Excess Of What's Needed To Dissuade The Other, That If It Weren't So Tragic, It Would Be Laughable. What Is Necessary Is To Reduce The Matches And To Clean Up The Gasoline.
Science
Two
Enemy
Too Much Openness And You Accept Every Notion, Idea, And Hypothesis-which Is Tantamount To Knowing Nothing. Too Much Skepticism-especially Rejection Of New Ideas Before They Are Adequately Tested-and You're Not Only Unpleasantly Grumpy, But Also Closed To The Advance Of Science. A Judicious Mix Is What We Need.
Knowledge
Acceptance
Science
...the Idea Of A Spiritual Part Of Our Nature That Survives Death, The Notion Of An Afterlife, Ought To Be Easy For Religions And Nations To Sell. This Is Not An Issue Of Which We Might Anticipate Widespread Skepticism. People Will Want To Believe It, Even If The Evidence Is Meager To Nil... Compelling Testimony ... Provides That Our Personality, Character, Memory ... Resides In The Matter Of The Brain, It Is Easy Not To Focus On It, To Find Ways To Evade The Weight Of The Evidence.
Spiritual
Memories
Believe
The Fossil Record Implies Trial And Error, An Inability To Anticipate The Future, Features Inconsistent With An Efficient Great Designer (although Not With A Designer Of A More Remote And Indirect Temperament)
Errors
Inability
Trial And Error
I'm Only A Four-dimensional Creature. Haven't Got A Clue How To Visualise Infinity. Even Einstein Hadn't. I Know Because I Asked Him
Four
Infinity
Clue
A Stars Rich In Europium; Of Distant Galaxies Analyzed Through The Collective Light Of A Hundred Billion Constituent Stars. Astronomical Spectroscopy Is An Almost Magical Technique. It Amazes Me Still. Auguste Comte Picked A Particularly Unfortunate Example.
Stars
Light
Technique
The Neurochemistry Of The Brain Is Astonishingly Busy, The Circuitry Of A Machine More Wonderful Than Any Devised By Humans. But There Is No Evidence That Its Functioning Is Due To Anything More Than The 10(14) Neural Connections That Build An Elegant Architecture Of Consciousness.
Brain
Connections
Machines
They (i. E., The Pythagoreans) Did Not Advocate The Free Confrontation Of Conflicting Points Of View. Instead, Like All Orthodox Religions, They Practised A Rigidity That Prevented Them From Correcting Their Errors.
Errors
Views
Rigidity
Perhaps The Depth Of Love Can Be Calibrated By The Number Of Different Selves That Are Actively Involved In A Given Relationship.
Self
Numbers
Depth
How Smart Does A Chimpanzee Have To Be Before Killing Him Constitutes Murder?
Smart
Doe
Murder
If We Ruin The Earth, There Is No Place Else To Go
Earth
Ruins
Ifs
In The Way That Scepticism Is Sometimes Applied To Issues Of Public Concern, There Is A Tendency To Belittle, To Condescend, To Ignore The Fact That, Deluded Or Not, Supporters Of Superstition And Pseudoscience Are Human Beings With Real Feelings, Who, Like The Sceptics, Are Trying To Figure Out How The World Works And What Our Role In It Might Be. Their Motives Are In Many Cases Consonant With Science. If Their Culture Has Not Given Them All The Tools They Need To Pursue This Great Quest, Let Us Temper Our Criticism With Kindness. None Of Us Comes Fully Equipped.
Kindness
Fear
Real
Because Men, Compared To Male Chimps, Have Such Relatively Small Testicles (large Testicles Indicate A Species Where Many Males Mate, One After The Other, With The Same Female), We Might Guess That Promiscuous Societies Were Uncommon In The Immediate Human Past.
Past
Men
Males
Those Afraid Of The Universe As It Really Is, Those Who Pretend To Nonexistent Knowledge And Envision A Cosmos Centered On Human Beings Will Prefer The Fleeting Comforts Of Superstition. They Avoid Rather Than Confront The World. But Those With The Courage To Explore The Weave And Structure Of The Cosmos, Even Where It Differs Profoundly From Their Wishes And Prejudices, Will Penetrate Its Deepest Mysteries.
Knowledge
Science
Wish
All Inquiries Carry With Them Some Element Of Risk.
Risk
Inquiry
Elements
We Are Made Of Star Stuff. For The Most Part, Atoms Heavier Than Hydrogen Were Created In The Interiors Of Stars And Then Expelled Into Space To Be Incorporated Into Later Stars. The Sun Is Probably A Third Generation Star.
Stars
Space
Atoms
Religions Are Tough. Either They Make No Contentions Which Are Subject To Disproof Or They Quickly Redesign Doctrine After Disproof. ... Near The Core Of The Religious Experience Is Something Remarkably Resistant To Rational Inquiry.
Religious
Science
Experience
Whatever The Reason You're On Mars, I'm Glad You're There, And I Wish I Was With You.
Wish
Mars
Reason
In The Fabric Of Space And In The Nature Of Matter, As In A Great Work Of Art, There Is, Written Small, The Artist's Signature.
Art
Nature
Space
If You Want To Save Your Child From Polio, You Can Pray Or You Can Inoculate....try Science.
Atheist
Children
Religion
I Am Not An Atheist. An Atheist Is Someone Who Has Compelling Evidence That There Is No Judeo-christian-islamic God. I Am Not That Wise, But Neither Do I Consider There To Be Anything Approaching Adequate Evidence For Such A God. Why Are You In Such A Hurry To Make Up Your Mind? Why Not Simply Wait Until There Is Compelling Evidence?
Christian
Wise
Atheist
You Have To Know The Past To Understand The Present.
Knowledge
Past
Political
The Very Act Of Understanding Is A Celebration Of Joining, Merging, Even If On A Very Modest Scale, With The Magnificence Of The Cosmos.
Understanding
Cosmos
Joining
Science Is Merely An Extremely Powerful Method Of Winnowing What's True From What Feels Good.
Powerful
Science
Feel Good
The Impediment To Scientific Thinking Is Not, I Think, The Difficulty Of The Subject. Complex Intellectual Feats Have Been Mainstays Even Of Oppressed Cultures. Shamans, Magicians And Theologians Are Highly Skilled In Their Intricate And Arcane Arts. No, The Impediment Is Political And Hierarchical.
Art
Thinking
Political
Where Did God Come From? If We Decide This Is An Unanswerable Question Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Origin Of The Universe Is An Unanswerable Question.
Religion
Why Not
Steps
Recent Research Shows That Many Children Without Enough To Eat Wind Up With Diminished Capacity To Understand And Learn (“cognitive Impairment” ). Children Don't Have To Be Starving For This To Happen. Even Mild Undernourishment — The Kind Most Common Among Poor People In America — Can Do It.
Children
Wind
America
With Insufficient Data It Is Easy To Go Wrong.
Data
Easy
Insufficient
Human Beings Have A Demonstrated Talent For Self-deception When Their Emotions Are Stirred.
Self
Deception
Vastness
Science ... Looks Skeptically At All Claims To Knowledge, Old And New. It Teaches Not Blind Obedience To Those In Authority But To Vigorous Debate, And In Many Respects That's The Secret Of Its Success.
Secret
Looks
Old And New
In Many Cultures It Is Customary To Answer That God Created The Universe Out Of Nothing. But This Is Mere Temporizing. If We Wish Courageously To Pursue The Question, We Must, Of Course Ask Next Where God Comes From? And If We Decide This To Be Unanswerable, Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Universe Has Always Existed?
Atheist
Religion
Wish
The Words "question" And "quest" Are Cognates. Only Through Inquiry Can We Discover Truth.
Truth
Inquiry
Quests
We Are The First Species To Have Taken Our Evolution Into Our Own Hands.
Taken
Hands
Firsts
Each Of Us Is A Tiny Being, Permitted To Ride On The Outermost Skin Of One Of The Smaller Planets For A Few Dozen Trips Around The Local Star.
Stars
Skins
Dozen
I Promise To Question Everything My Leaders Tell Me. I Promise To Use My Critical Faculties. I Promise To Develop My Independence Of Thought. I Promise To Educate Myself So I Can Make My Own Judgments.
Leader
Independence
Promise
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.
War
Years
Space
Human History Can Be Viewed As A Slowly Dawning Awareness That We Are Members Of A Larger Group.
Groups
Cosmos
Awareness
Sailors On A Becalmed Sea, We Sense The Stirring Of A Breeze.
Sea
Sailor
Breeze
We Should Be Teaching Our Children The Scientific Method And The Reasons For A Bill Of Rights. With It Comes A Certain Decency, Humility And Community Spirit.
Atheist
Children
Teaching
The Nuclear Arms Race Is Like Two Sworn Enemies Standing Waist Deep In Gasoline, One With Three Matches, The Other With Five.
Two
Race
Enemy
The Passion To Explore Is At The Heart Of Being Human.
Nature
Passion
Heart
Understanding Is A Kind Of Ecstasy
Understanding
Curiosity
Kind
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.
Ocean
Self
Years
Who Are We, If Not Measured By Our Impact On Others?
Impact
Ifs
If You Want To Make A [rhubarb] Pie From Scratch, First You Have To Create The Universe.
Pie
Scratches
Want
Modern Science Has Been A Voyage Into The Unknown, With A Lesson In Humility Waiting At Every Stop. Many Passengers Would Rather Have Stayed Home.
Home
Humility
Science
Our Concern For The Future Can Be Tested By How Well We Support Our Libraries.
Support
Library
Librarian
People Are Not Stupid. They Believe Things For Reasons. The Last Way For Skeptics To Get The Attention Of Bright, Curious, Intelligent People Is To Belittle Or Condescend Or To Show Arrogance Toward Their Beliefs.
Stupid
Believe
Intelligent
Science Is A Way To Call The Bluff Of Those Who Only Pretend To Knowledge. It Is A Bulwark Against Mysticism, Against Superstition, Against Religion Misapplied To Where It Has No Business Being.
Superstitions
Way
Bluffs
Stars Are Phoenixes, Rising From Their Own Ashes.
Stars
Phoenix
Ashes
I Believe That In Every Person Is A Kind Of Circuit Which Resonates To Intellectual Discovery-and The Idea Is To Make That Resonance Work
Believe
Science
Discovery
It Is Of Interest To Note That While Some Dolphins Are Reported To Have Learned English - Up To Fifty Words Used In Correct Context - No Human Being Has Been Reported To Have Learned Dolphinese.
Motivational
Learning
Humility
Books Tap The Wisdom Of Our Species -- The Greatest Minds, The Best Teachers -- From All Over The World And From All Our History. And They're Patient.
Teacher
Book
Mind
There Is Much That Science Doesn't Understand, Many Mysteries Still To Be Resolved. In A Universe Tens Of Billions Of Light-years Across And Some Ten Or Fifteen Billion Years Old, This May Be The Case Forever. We Are Constantly Stumbling On New Surprises
Light
Years
Forever
Our Ancestors Worshipped The Sun, And They Were Not That Foolish. It Makes Sense To Revere The Sun And The Stars, For We Are Their Children.
Stars
Children
Sun
Virtually Every Major Technological Advance In The History Of The Human Species - Back To The Invention Of Stone Tools And The Domestication Of Fire - Has Been Ethically Ambiguous.
Atheist
Fire
Religion
In Science It Often Happens That Scientists Say, "you Know That's A Really Good Argument; My Position Is Mistaken..."
Change
Science
Theoretical Physics
We Live In A Vast And Awesome Universe In Which, Daily, Suns Are Made And Worlds Destroyed, Where Humanity Clings To An Obscure Clod Of Rock.
Rocks
Humanity
World
So Those Who Wished For Some Central Cosmic Purpose For Us, Or At Least Our World, Or At Least Our Solar System, Or At Least Our Galaxy, Have Been Disappointed, Progressively Disappointed. The Universe Is Not Responsive To Our Ambitious Expectations.
Our World
Expectations
Ambitious
National Boundaries Are Not Evident When We View The Earth From Space. Fanatical Ethnic Or Religious Or National Chauvinisms Are A Little Difficult To Maintain When We See Our Planet As A Fragile Blue Crescent Fading To Become An Inconspicuous Point Of Light Against The Bastion And Citadel Of The Stars.
Religious
Stars
Science
You Mustn't Think Of The Universe As A Wilderness. It Hasn't Been That For Billions Of Years," He Said. "think Of It More As... ..cultivated.
Thinking
Years
Wilderness
Is Mankind Alone In The Universe? Or Are There Somewhere Other Intelligent Beings Looking Up Into Their Night Sky From Very Different Worlds And Asking The Same Kind Of Question?
Intelligent
Night
Sky
He Sought A Way To Preserve The Past. John Hershel Was One Of The Founders Of A New Form Of Time Travel.... A Means To Capture Light And Memories. He Actually Coined A Word For It... Photography. When You Think About It, Photography Is A Form Of Time Travel. This Man Is Staring At Us From Across The Centuries, A Ghost Preserved By Light.
Photography
Memories
Mean
The Suppression Of Uncomfortable Ideas May Be Common In Religion Or In Politics, But It Is Not The Path To Knowledge; It Has No In The Endeavor Of Science. We Do Not Know In Advance Who Will Discover Fundamental Insights.
Knowledge
Science
Ideas
The Big Bang Is Our Modern Scientific Creation Myth. It Comes From The Same Human Need To Solve The Cosmological Riddle [where Did The Universe Come From?]
Bangs
Needs
Creation
We Humans Look Rather Different From A Tree. Without A Doubt We Perceive The World Differently Than A Tree Does. But Down Deep, At The Molecular Heart Of Life, The Trees And We Are Essentially Identical.
Heart
Tree
Doubt
A New Consciousness Is Developing Which Sees The Earth As A Single Organism And Recognizes That An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed. We Are One Planet.
War
Earth
Consciousness
Arguments From Authority Carry Little Weight – Authorities Have Made Mistakes In The Past. They Will Do So Again In The Future. Perhaps A Better Way To Say It Is That In Science There Are No Authorities; At Most, There Are Experts.
Mistake
Past
Way
Many Religions Have Attempted To Make Statues Of Their Gods Very Large, And The Idea, I Suppose, Is To Make Us Feel Small. But If That's Their Purpose, They Can Keep Their Paltry Icons. We Need Only Look Up If We Wish To Feel Small.
Ideas
Icons
Wish
There Are As Many Atoms In One Molecule Of Dna As There Are Stars In A Typical Galaxy.
Stars
Dna
Typical
A Tiny Blue Dot Set In A Sunbeam. Here It Is. That's Where We Live. That's Home. We Humans Are One Species And This Is Our World. It Is Our Responsibility To Cherish It. Of All The Worlds In Our Solar System, The Only One So Far As We Know, Graced By Life.
Home
Responsibility
Our World
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.
Running
Night
Ideas
The Sacred Truth Of Science Is That There Are No Sacred Truths.
Sacred
In Mozambique, The Story Goes, Monkeys Do Not Talk, Because They Know If They Utter Even A Single Word Some Man Will Come And Put Them To Work.
Men
Mozambique
Stories
It Is Far Better To Grasp The Universe As It Really Is Than To Persist In Delusion, However Satisfying And Reassuring.
Death
Witty
Atheist
We Live In An In-between Universe Where Things Change All Right...but According To Patterns, Rules, Or As We Call Them, Laws Of Nature.
Law
Patterns
Things Change
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.
Stars
Numbers
People
Except In Pure Mathematics, Nothing Is Known For Certain (although Much Is Certainly False).
Mathematics
Certain
Pure
In The Long Run, The Aggressive Civilizations Destroy Themselves, Almost Always. It's Their Nature. They Can't Help It.
Running
Civilization
Long
We Can Always Take But Never Give.
Giving
I Am Often Amazed At How Much More Capability And Enthusiasm For Science There Is Among Elementary School Youngsters Than Among College Students.
Education
School
Learning
All Inquires Carry With Them Some Element Of Risk. There Is No Guarantee That The Universe Will Conform To Our Predispositions.
Guarantees That
Risk
Elements
If We Are Merely Matter Intricately Assembled, Is This Really Demeaning? If There's Nothing Here But Atoms, Does That Make Us Less Or Does That Make Matter More?
Doe
Atoms
Matter
All Civilizations Become Either Spacefaring Or Extinct.
Science
Civilization
The Wind Whips Through The Canyons Of The American Southwest, And There Is No One To Hear It But Us - A Reminder Of The 40,000 Generations Of Thinking Men And Women Who Preceded Us, About Whom We Know Almost Nothing, Upon Whom Our Civilization Is Based.
Men
Thinking
Wind
After I Give Lectures-on Almost Any Subject-i Am Often Asked, "do You Believe In Ufos?" I'm Always Struck By How The Question Is Phrased, The Suggestion That This Is A Matter Of Belief And Not Evidence. I'm Almost Never Asked, "how Good Is The Evidence That Ufos Are Alien Spaceships?"
Believe
Giving
Suggestions
It's Perilous And Foolhardy For The Average Citizen To Remain Ignorant About Global Warming, Say, Or Ozone Depletion, Air Pollution, Toxic And Radioactive Wastes, Acid Rain, Topsoil Erosion, Tropical Deforestation, Exponential Population Growth. Jobs And Wages Depend On Science And Technology.
Jobs
Rain
Technology
I Went To The Librarian And Asked For A Book About Stars.... And The Answer Was Stunning. It Was That The Sun Was A Star But Really Close. The Stars Were Suns, But So Far Away They Were Just Little Points Of Light.... The Scale Of The Universe Suddenly Opened Up To Me. It Was A Kind Of Religious Experience. There Was A Magnificence To It, A Grandeur, A Scale Which Has Never Left Me. Never Ever Left Me.
Religious
Stars
Book
We Have Also Arranged Things So That Almost No One Understands Science And Technology. This Is A Prescription For Disaster. We Might Get Away With It For A While, But Sooner Or Later This Combustible Mixture Of Ignorance And Power Is Going To Blow Up In Our Faces.
Motivational
Education
Ignorance
I Would Love To Believe That When I Die I Will Live Again, That Some Thinking, Feeling, Remembering Part Of Me Will Continue. But As Much As I Want To Believe That, And Despite The Ancient And Worldwide Cultural Traditions That Assert An Afterlife, I Know Of Nothing To Suggest That It Is More Than Wishful Thinking.
Atheist
Believe
Thinking
There Is A Lurking Fear That Some Things Are Not “meant" To Be Known, That Some Inquiries Are Too Dangerous For Human Beings To Make.
Keeping Secrets
Some Things Are Meant To Be
Known
Since World War Ii, Japan Has Spawned Enormous Numbers Of New Religions Featuring The Supernatural.... In Thailand, Diseases Are Treated With Pills Manufactured From Pulverized Sacred Scripture. Witches Are Today Being Burned In South Africa.... The Worldwide Tm [transcendental Meditation] Organization Has An Estimated Valuation Of $3 Billion. For A Fee, They Promise To Make You Invisible, To Enable You To Fly.
Atheist
War
Numbers
Every Star May Be A Sun To Someone.
Stars
May
Sun
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