Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Carl Sagan
About This Quote

In 1995 the first words of the first law of robotics were written by Isaac Asimov. The law states: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." If we consider the concept of accepting the risk of something happening, let’s say that we can accept the risk of an asteroid hitting Earth. However, we cannot accept the risk that “allowing a human being to come to harm” will happen. In other words: if an asteroid hits Earth and creates destruction and harm, we should take action because it is our responsibility to protect people on Earth.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. - Carl Sagan
  2. I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  3. To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human. - Louise Erdrich
  4. People say I make strange choices, but they’re not strange for me. My sickness is that I’m fascinated by human behavior, by what’s underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people. - Johnny Depp
  5. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. - Albert Camus
More Quotes By Carl Sagan
  1. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
  2. The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
  3. The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a...
  4. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
  5. We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.
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