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"Perhaps the locale of the subjunctive mood willone day be found. Will Latins turn out to be extravagantly endowed and English-speaking peoples significantly short-changed in this minor piece of brain anatomy?"
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"Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues."
"A word is not filling in the gaps, but the fertilization of silence."
"It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters."
"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another."
"Putting it into words will destroy any meaning."
"Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape."
"Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence."
Explore more quotes by Carl Sagan
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
"The Man in the Moon is in fact a record of ancient catastrophes--most of which took place before humans, before mammals, and probably even before life arose on Earth. It is a characteristic conceit of our species to put a human face on random cosmic violence."
"Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?"
"It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we're talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality."
"But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble."
"In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind."
"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 strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way."
"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?"
"I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign."
"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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