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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 6h

My wonder button is being pushed all the time.

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 19h

"The secrets of evolution, are time and death.

There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 1d

"and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 2d

"The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, and generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 3d

Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it's like democracy. Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses of action.

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 4d

"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."
-Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 4d

"What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 5d

"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."

-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 5d

"Once intelligent beings achieve technology and the capacity for self-destruction of their species, the selective advantage of intelligence becomes more uncertain."

-Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 6d

A gentle warning from Carl Sagan

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 7d

"We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 8d

"The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee."

-Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 9d

"If you’re too resolutely and uncompromisingly sceptical, you’re going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere scepticism is not enough."

- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 10d

"Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science."

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 11d

"Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone."

-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 11d

"The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines."

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 12d

"By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 12d

"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 13d

"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic."

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Reposted by Saganism

Astronomy 🔭 @astronomy.bsky.social · 15d

A tiny dark nebula floats in front of the glowing Eagle Nebula, stark in silhouette. This small Bok globule just a fraction of a light-year across lies about 7,000 light-years away, with young stars and gas glowing behind it.

Credit: Peter Bresseler

$A tiny dark nebula floats in front of the glowing Eagle Nebula, stark in silhouette. This small Bok globule just a fraction of a light-year across lies about 7,000 light-years away, with young stars and gas glowing behind it. Credit: Peter Bresseler$

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 13d

"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?"

-Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 14d

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 15d

"All the atoms that make each of us up—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains—were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff."
-Carl Sagan,The Demon-Haunted World

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 16d

"Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it.
Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse."
-Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 16d

"Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact."
-Carl Sagan

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