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872bd85
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
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science
inspirational
astronomy
space-travel
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Carl Sagan |
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3a407cd
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"Interviewer: Didn't want to believe? Druyan:
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science
truth
sagan
astronomy
carl-sagan
belief
atheism
knowledge
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Ann Druyan |
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5ed5bfd
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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.
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earth
science
astronomy
folly
nationalism
space
conceit
pride
human-nature
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Carl Sagan |
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f7f1a8e
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Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.
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universe
mind
nature
spirit
religion
science
life
behaviorism
behaviorists
first-cause
ivan-pavlov
ivan-petrovich-pavlov
john-b-watson
john-broadus-watson
stimuli
john-watson
pavlov
cosmology
astronomy
watson
goal
environment
determinism
ethics
theology
dogma
materialism
naturalism
consciousness
science-and-religion
life-after-death
physics
psychology
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Nikola Tesla |
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41980cb
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Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink--help the alcoholic who can't.' (' '?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.' All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was: Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.
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war
history
andrei-gromyko
astrology
birthdays
communist-party-of-china
corfu
corfu-channel-incident
ernst-von-weizsacker
flushing-meadows
flushing-queens
horoscopes
hosni-zayim
international-court-of-justice
mao
nato
nuremberg
the-hague
ussr
czechoslovakia
passover-seder
prohibition
astronomy
breastfeeding
alcohol
nazis
beijing
damascus
united-nations
vatican
united-states
birth
hitler
alcoholism
mars
gods
newspapers
antisemitism
britain
diplomacy
israel
jews
communism
china
censorship
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Christopher Hitchens |
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3b54aa5
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As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear. It is a part of their business to malign and vilify the , , , , Tyndalls, , , , and Drapers, and to bow with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the sublime standard of reason.
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prejudice
mind
world
stupidity
reason
fear
adulterers
alexander-humboldt
children-science
david-hume
draper
ernst-haeckel
haeckel
herbert-spencer
humboldt
hume
john-draper
john-william-draper
persecutors
propositions
spencer
theologian
vilify
wilhelm-humboldt
wilhelm-von-humboldt
alexander-von-humboldt
murderers
astronomy
charles-darwin
theologians
geology
afterlife
theology
darwin
paine
thomas-paine
voltaire
sublime
knowledge
power
poison
john-tyndall
tyndall
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Robert G. Ingersoll |
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d6fc0f0
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"Cainan (sometimes the name is spelled Kainam) was the son of Arpachsad: "And the son grew, and his father taught him writing, and he went to seek for himself a place where he might seize for himself a city. And he found a writing, which former generations had carved on the rock, and he read what was thereon, and he transcribed it and sinned owing to it, for it contained the teaching of the Watchers in accordance with which they used to observe the omens of the sun, moon and stars in all the signs of heaven." Here, then, is the origin of the star worship of the Sabians traced all the way back to the mysterious Watchers--whoever they were, whatever they are--who settled in the Near East in antediluvian times, taught our ancestors forbidden knowledge, broke some fundamental commandment by mating with human women and, as a result, were remembered as being responsbile for the great global cataclysm of the Deluge."
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writing
sabians
watchers
astronomy
generations
teachings
knowledge
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Graham Hancock |
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3154912
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Once a small planet is discovered, astronomers try to determine which category it belongs to. This is like biologists trying to classify a new animal as either being a mammal or reptile.
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astronomy
biologists
biology
sarcasm
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Michio Kaku |