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Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

Carl Sagan

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
CARL SAGAN

Book Content Finish Library Lifetime Percent Reading Time Trick Week
Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
CARL SAGAN

Book Century Flower Lie Promise Seed Soil
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
CARL SAGAN

Astronomy Incredible Inspirational Science
The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage.
CARL SAGAN

Courage Determination Fragile Live Planet Significance Wisdom
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
CARL SAGAN

Book Permit Time Voyage Wisdom
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.
CARL SAGAN

Earth Harbor Life
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
CARL SAGAN

Butterfly Forever Human Nature Thinking
I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.
CARL SAGAN

Assume Come Consideration Danger Extreme Ourselves Outside Problem Solution
We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it.
CARL SAGAN

Bound Human Quality Religion Science Thirist Wonder
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
CARL SAGAN

Deception Demonstrate Emotion Human
We live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
CARL SAGAN

Dust Live Sun Suspend
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
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
CARL SAGAN

Civilization Extinct Science Space
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.
CARL SAGAN

Book Dead Glance Hear Perhaps Reading Time Voice Voyage
The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
CARL SAGAN

Argument Cure Ideas Suppression
Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.
CARL SAGAN

Distance Greatness Ignorance Mistake Perspective

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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