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.
CARL SAGANThe truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.
More Carl Sagan Quotes
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The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.
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There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.
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A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles.
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Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
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Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).
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Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
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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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We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it.
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Nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.
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You have to know the past to understand the present.
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I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
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Every star may be a sun to someone.
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To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.
CARL SAGAN