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Quotes by Astronomer of the Authors - Page 18
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Science
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Argument
Dominance
Hierarchy
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I'm not a specialist in the science but I have followed it fairly closely and it seems to me that there is among the experts a clear consensus that potential climate change is something to worry about.
Martin Rees
/
Astronomer
Climate
Experts
Worry
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If you took every nuclear weapon ever built at the height of the Cold War, lumped them together and blew them up at the same time, that would be one one-millionth of the energy released at that moment.
Phil Plait
/
Astronomer
War
Inspiration
Motivation
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It seems obvious that if a species has the brainpower for speech, along with the sort of appendages that can manipulate a pair of pliers, it will eventually blunder into science, technology, and radio.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Manipulate
Obvious
Species
Blunder
Science Technology Will
Pair
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When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.
Simon Newcomb
/
Astronomer
Men
Fifteen
Knives
Prayer
Scandal
Young Man
Above
Neck
Meeting
Squeezed
Stood
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While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Opportunity
Science
Brain
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Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Looks
Old And New
Secret
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Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Life
Compassion
Keys
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Astronomy is something like the ministry. No one should go into it without a call. I got that unmistakable call, and I know that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.
Edwin Powell Hubble
/
Astronomer
Space
Astronomy
Ministry
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If you take 10,000 people at random, 9,999 have something in common: their interests in business lie on or near the Earth's surface. The odd one out is an astronomer, and I am one of that strange breed.
Martin Rees
/
Astronomer
Business
Common
Earth
Odd
Strange
Surface
Astronomer
Breed
Lie
Interests
Near
Random
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We're not just any star stuff, most of which is humdrum hydrogen and listless helium. Our bodies include fancier ingredients like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, and a few other herbs and spices.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Carbon
Helium
Herbs
Humdrum
Hydrogen
Ingredients
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Spices
Bodies
Include
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Mountains aren't eternal: even the most imposing massifs are smoothed away by weathering in a few hundred million years or less. Plate tectonics makes new ones, and without it, our future would be flat.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Eternal
Hundred
Imposing
Mountains
Million Years
New Ones
Plate
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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.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Doubt
Heart
Tree
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We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own.
Maria Mitchell
/
Astronomer
Travel
Country
Inspiration
Catch
Heights
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If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Book
Library
Lifetime
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Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Death
Learning
Chance
History
Delighted
Turns
Would Be
Discover
Gave
Permitted
Personally
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How does a pansy, for example, select the ingredients from soil to get the right colors for the flower? Now there's a great miracle. I think there's a supreme power behind all of this. I see it in nature.
Clyde Tombaugh
/
Astronomer
Nature
Great
Example
Flower
Ingredients
Miracle
Soil
Supreme
Supreme Power
Thinking
Now
Does
Behind
Colors
How
For Example
Right
See
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I thought I'd better check this third plate, which is another date, see if there's an image there in the right place that would be consistent with the images on the other plates. That was the final proof.
Clyde Tombaugh
/
Astronomer
Consistent
Proof
Right Place
Date
Check
Final
Image
Images
Plate
Third
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This plucky NASA telescope is able to find planets en masse. If you compare planet hunting to prospecting for gold, then Kepler is equivalent to trading in your trusty pan for a diesel-powered sluice box.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Compare
Gold
Hunting
Nasa
Planets
Trading
Box
Equivalent
Masse
Pan
Planet
Telescope
Trusty
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In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab, you could make major scientific discoveries in your own home. Right? Because there was all this science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Lying
Waiting
Basement
Discoveries
Lab
Scientific
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Forecasting Armageddon has become trendy of late, with a great deal of attention being given to an interpretation of the Mayan Calendar suggesting that Mother Earth is destined for doom in December of 2012.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Armageddon
December
Destined
Doom
Forecasting
Interpretation
Mother Earth
Suggesting
Trendy
Calendar
Great Deal
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It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.
Allan Sandage
/
Astronomer
Science
Understanding
World
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One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Media
People
Stupidity
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Engineers are now experimenting with 4,096-line TV systems, suggesting that with the next generation of sets you'll be able to count the grass blades on the Superbowl field, an obvious lifestyle improvement.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Engineers
Grass
Improvement
Lifestyle
Obvious
Suggesting
Count
Experimenting
Sets
Systems
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A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Space
Civilization
Moon
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The universe is so immense that it appears immutable, and that the duration of a planet such as that of the earth is only a chapter, less than that, a phrase, less still, only a word of the universe’s history.
Camille Flammarion
/
Astronomer
Duration
Earth
Phrases
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We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Intelligence
Respect
Science
Intelligent
Thinking
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The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Errors
Inability
Trial And Error
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Science is the one culture that's truly global - protons, proteins and Pythagoras's Theorem are the same from China to Peru. It should transcend all barriers of nationality. It should straddle all faiths, too.
Martin Rees
/
Astronomer
Barriers
Nationality
Peru
Faiths
Proteins
Theorem
Transcend
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Construction of an aerial vehicle which can carry even a single man . . . requires the discovery of some new metal or force. Even with such a discovery, we could not expect one to do more than carry its owner.
Simon Newcomb
/
Astronomer
Men
Discovery
Flight
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There's a large cluster of stars that are orbiting the center of our galaxy. And by measuring the motion of stars, and in particular, their orbits, we can figure out whether or not there's a central black hole.
Andrea M. Ghez
/
Astronomer
Black Hole
Galaxy
Measuring
Center
Cluster
Hole
Motion
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I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
Arthur Eddington
/
Astronomer
Believe
Mathematics
Numbers
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I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive. And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity-beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee.
Martin Rees
/
Astronomer
Life
Science
Intelligent
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The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.
Simon Newcomb
/
Astronomer
Documents
Eclipse
Party
Reports
Sea
Swag
Detail
Experiences
Marked
Observations
Official
Parties
Scientific
Travels
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The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.
William Herschel
/
Astronomer
Science
Eye
Fall
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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.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Imagination
Lying
Wish
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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.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Criticism
Dumb
Self
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We can make a similar examination, but with greater uncertainty, of the extraterrestrial hypothesis that holds that a wide range of UFOs viewed on the planet Earth are space vehicles from planets of other stars.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Space
Earth
Stars
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Each wave of sightings adds to the accumulation of reports which defy analysis by present methods... An investigative process in depth is necessary here if, after twenty years of confusion, we want some answers.
J. Allen Hynek
/
Astronomer
Confusion
Depth
Years
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Studying Sol's interior by looking for analogous patterns on its incandescent face is known as helioseismology, an active - if largely unpronounceable - research area that uses sound as a probe of our home star.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Active
Patterns
Interior
Largely
Probe
Studying
Uses
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Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others? That’s who we are! We’re not who we say we are, we’re not who we want to be - we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Motivational
Impact
Want
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When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Science
Heart
Integrity
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If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Religion
Atheist
Childhood
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The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Function
Nuclear
Nuclear Weapons
Weapons
Gotta
Prevent
Professed
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The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.
Fred Hoyle
/
Astronomer
Boeing 747
Junk
Origin Of Life
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Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to bulldoze the spot where Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle lander. But even innocent visits could be damaging.
Seth Shostak
/
Astronomer
Armstrong
Dose
Innocent
Massive
Admittedly
Bulldoze
Damaging
Eagle
Spot
Neil
Stepped
Visits
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In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.
Vera Rubin
/
Astronomer
Journey
Knowledge
Dark
Ignorance
Light
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In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.
Vera Rubin
/
Astronomer
Knowledge
Galaxy
Ignorance
Matter
Ten
Factor
Number
Knowledge Good Ignorance
Grade
Ratio
Spiral
Third
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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?
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Mars
Miracle
Would Be
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People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.
Carl Sagan
/
Astronomer
Believe
Intelligent
Stupid
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