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12e15fc
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The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
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Carl Sagan |
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feb0dc9
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The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them -- the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.
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skepticism
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Carl Sagan |
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65c7c25
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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. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.
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spirituality
religion
science
freethinking
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Carl Sagan |
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ace4bd5
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You are worth about 3 dollars worth in chemicals.
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Carl Sagan |
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2ddafe5
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From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again 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 her..
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science
space-and-cosmos
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Carl Sagan |
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b489cb1
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An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.
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Carl Sagan |
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4089308
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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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stupidity
science
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Carl Sagan |
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e545e68
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We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes..
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Carl Sagan |
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9d06146
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We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
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Carl Sagan |
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b3b9d0c
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Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.
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religion
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Carl Sagan |
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dc13fe0
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Observation: I can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.
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sagan
skepticism
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Carl Sagan |
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eee8de9
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Atoms are mainly empty space. Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.
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Carl Sagan |
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29f733f
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If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit ..
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humanity
science
education
skepticism
society
rights
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Carl Sagan |
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9fcf97c
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Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or ..
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science
science-vs-religion
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Carl Sagan |
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38de9a0
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We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
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Carl Sagan |
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32fc77f
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A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?
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earth
science
space-exploration
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Carl Sagan |
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bc65b15
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It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.
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Carl Sagan |
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1beffaa
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Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes..
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science
skepticism
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Carl Sagan |
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77f489b
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The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it.
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Carl Sagan |
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0fe42bb
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There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
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Carl Sagan |
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8501036
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Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
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Carl Sagan |
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2f6223c
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It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
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dreams
god
gods
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Carl Sagan |
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129efdd
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If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
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science
sagan
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Carl Sagan |
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c4ddec4
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There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.
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Carl Sagan |
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0c03caa
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I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up aro..
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cosmos
carl-sagan
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Carl Sagan |
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f3e4af1
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I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world's birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: 'What did you expect the Moon to be, square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question..
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Carl Sagan |
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1e7b53c
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Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
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space
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Carl Sagan |
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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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bf6f72c
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The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and s..
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science
solar-system
exploration
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Carl Sagan |
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c6e85bd
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Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically wort..
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Carl Sagan |
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35fe927
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In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them a..
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Carl Sagan |
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f3fbeb6
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One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.
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Carl Sagan |
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70ac2ce
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The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.
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Carl Sagan |
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52d069f
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Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.
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Carl Sagan |
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806fe3d
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Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the 'Momentary' masters of a 'Fraction' of a 'Dot'
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Carl Sagan |
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b08a06b
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Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.
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Carl Sagan |
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7089f2c
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What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.
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science
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Carl Sagan |
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5b21d23
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We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.
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Carl Sagan |
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d532f2b
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If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business, if there was any competition.
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religion
god
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Carl Sagan |
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310b7ef
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The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
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future
dreams
hope
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Carl Sagan |
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fb239ea
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Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.
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Carl Sagan |
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f94ca73
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At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating..
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science
human-development
space
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Carl Sagan |
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9132f4c
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When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.
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stars
science
night-sky
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Carl Sagan |
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3e0afbc
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Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.
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religion
science
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Carl Sagan |