Carl Sagan citáty

strana 7

„Jako děti se bojíme tmy. Neznámé nás děsí. Tam venku může být cokoliv. Paradoxně je to náš osud žít ve tmě. Vyrazte ze Země, kterýmkoliv směrem si vyberete a po počátečním záblesku modré, jste obklopeni černotou, přerušovanou pouze světlem mdlých hvězd. Dokonce i poté, co dospějeme, si temnota uchovává svou moc nás děsit. A proto jsou zde tací, kdož hovoří, že bychom se neměli příliš tázat, kdo další může žít v té temnotě.“

„Nepřítomnost důkazu není důkazem neexistence.“

„Je dobré mít otevřenou mysl, ale ne tak aby nám vypadl mozek z hlavy.“

„Nechci věřit, já chci pochopit.“

„Fantazie nás někdy zanese do světů, které neexistují. Ale bez fantazie se nedostaneme vůbec nikam.“

„Vesmír není povinen být v dokonalé harmonii s lidskou ctižádostí.“

„Ptám se. Kdo má větší pokoru? Vědec, který se dívá na vesmír s otevřenou myslí a přijímá cokoliv, co nás vesmír učí? Anebo někdo, kdo říká, že všechno v této knize musí být vykládáno jako čistá pravda a nikdy se nemáme starat o omylnost lidských bytostí, které tuto knihu psali?“

„Věda je více než jen soubor poznatků. Je to způsob myšlení. Způsob skeptického vyslýchání vesmíru s jemným porozuměním lidské omylnosti.“

„Je mnohem lepší brát vesmír takový, jaký doopravdy je, než setrvávat v bludu jakkoliv uspokojujícím a uklidňujícím.“

„Nemáme-li žádnou výjimečnou polohu, rychlost či zrychlení, ani odlišný původ než jiné rostliny a živočichové, pak bychom alespoň mohli být nejchytřejšími bytostmi celého vesmíru. V tom je naše jedinečnost.“

„Žijeme ve společnosti, naprosto závislé na vědě a technologii, a přesto skoro nikdo vědě a technologii nerozumí. To je jasný recept na katastrofu.“

„Mozek je jako sval. Když je používán cítíme se velmi dobře. Chápání je radostné.“

„Nemůžete přesvědčit věřící o čemkoli, protože jejich víra není založená na důkazech, ale je založena na hlubokém základě potřeby věřit.“

„Zánik je pravidlem. Přežití je výjimkou.“

„Mimořádná tvrzení vyžadují mimořádné důkazy.“

„Jedinou svatou pravdou je, že žádné svaté pravdy neexistují.“

“You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.”

“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”

“The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.”

“Science is, at least in part, informed worship.”

“I've always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.”

“Those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.”

“We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”

“We make our purpose.”

“If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?”

“We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.”

“If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go”

“A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.”

“And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude.”

“Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”

“Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.”

“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.”

“The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.”

“Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.”

“Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse.”

“The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.”

“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”

“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.”

“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.”

“Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.”

“By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.”

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

“All colours are arbitrary.”

“Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”