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"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
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"Though the earth contains greater energy and mass than any single being, linked together, "people make the world go-round"."

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities " but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."

"If a media is not criticizing the government, then that media is not a media but just a clown of the government!"

"William Cowper said that God made the country, and man made the town. If it was the opposite, there would be no country; because town can be created from the country but the country cannot be created from the town!"

"Bureaucracy is a huge beast; deeply rooted, it exists even among artists; it's an almost losing battle against it."

"Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him."

"Saying someone is religious is heard in most of America as a compliment, a reassuring affirmation that someone will be moral, ethical, and after a few glasses of wine, a freak in the bedroom."

"Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations..."

"More than anything else, we need in this society the opportunity for people to tell us what they think without being told that they're either dumb, or stupid, or uninformed."
Explore more quotes by Carl Sagan

"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."

"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."

"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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