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Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

Carl Sagan

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
CARL SAGAN

Awake Citizen Deserve Mind Species Understand Work World
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
CARL SAGAN

Hostile Indifference Universe
Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.
CARL SAGAN

Comfortable Fantasy Inspirational Truth
The 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.
CARL SAGAN

desperatel Determination Preference Prejudice Puzzle True Truth Want Work
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.
CARL SAGAN

Awareness Book Civilization Concern Culture Depth Future Health Library Test
And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.
CARL SAGAN

Biology Cell Science
Nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.
CARL SAGAN

Elegant Imagination Nature Stuble
Writing is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.
CARL SAGAN

Blind Citizen Distant Greatness Human Invention People Togetherness Writing
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
CARL SAGAN

Book Permit Time Voyage Wisdom
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
CARL SAGAN

Civilization Extinct Science Space
A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles.
CARL SAGAN

Assemble Book Leaf Print Tree
There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.
CARL SAGAN

Delicate Forbidden Matter Scare Science Sensitive Truth
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
CARL SAGAN

Body Knowledge Science Thinking
Stars are phoenixes, rising from their own ashes.
CARL SAGAN

Ash Rise Science Stars
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.
CARL SAGAN

Atom Beauty Cosmic Couple Live Marriage Togetherness
You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals.
CARL SAGAN

Chemical Science Worth

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

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Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

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