Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
What an astonishing thing a book is.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A book is an incredible tool that holds knowledge and imagination.
This quote by Carl Sagan emphasizes the remarkable nature of books as vessels of knowledge, creativity, and exploration. They allow readers to transcend time and space, experiencing the thoughts and ideas of others while gaining insights that can astonish and inspire.
Themes
BooksKnowledgeImaginationReadingInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of reading and education.
More from Carl Sagan
All quotes βIn more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
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How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
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The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
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There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
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The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
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Similar quotes
Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.
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Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.
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Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.
Emma ThompsonRead
New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works...images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.
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Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine.
Roxane GayRead
Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.
A. Bartlett GiamattiRead