For thousands of years humans were oppressed– as some of us still are– by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2, 500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. . Carl Sagan
Some Similar Quotes
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  2. When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable. - Jess C. Scott

  3. When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always. - Mahatma Gandhi

  4. Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having... - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  5. The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then... - Thomas Merton

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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