Friday, July 30, 2010

Friday Quotes

Note the plural ....Could not restrict myself to just one quote by Carl Sagan.



But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.



A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.


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.


It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.


Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.







3 comments:

Unknown said...

Elegant Sagan ... as always.

What eloquence!

Mesmerising.

I often wonder about the breadth of human character — how wide the spectrum is.

Think of all that has gone before to lead to us ... the recent hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary history of the hominids and the millions of years before that of mammalian evolution ...

And before that? I do not even know ... more than 500 million years back to the Cambrian explosion ... and then four more billion years of boring microbes ...

That's what it took to make us — humans. One wonders if it's necessarily that 'complex.'

Does every instance of the creation of intelligent civilization have to have such a long history of gestation???

Or is it that it's even more complex than that? Perhaps we ARE the ONLY 'intelligent' civilization in the whole of the visible universe ...

What an awesome responsibility then!

And what an aweful waste of real estate!

100 billion galaxies and one intelligent civilazation inhabiting it!

And members of that civilization span the spectrum from the likes of Hitler to the likes of Sagan ...

Kishores said...

It's nice to see you are posting quite often. Your expressions are well made. I can see an author in the making. An author these days needs to be unconventional and your ideas, profile, language etc match the expectations of publishers and readers. You can start some serious writing.

Vaishnavi said...

eloquent was the word that came to my mind too! looks like its already taken, so i ll just quietly second Sachidanand!

NOTE: i see eye to eye with him on "Or is it that it's even more complex than that? Perhaps we ARE the ONLY 'intelligent' civilization in the whole of the visible universe ...

What an awesome responsibility then!

And what an aweful waste of real estate!" cant agree more!

Mami, fridays are good. atleast here on this page!! :)