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- 1 year ago

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"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men" - Carl Sagan

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That's bullshit.

You should see my dreams. No deities that I would believe.

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here you are :

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

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As a huge Carl Sagan fan, I gotta say this is the most unquoteable quotes I have ever seen attributed to him.

Let me try one.

It is said that men may not be the dreams of women but rather that women are the dreams of men...unless of course women are the dreams of women or men are the dreams of men. There are probably a BBBillion variations on that one too.

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It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

C. Sagan.

Bonus :

Sagan on being high (by the way, you don't need drugs to get high, that's just a cheap short cut).

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day.

Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for.

I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say "Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!" I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it's as if two people are reading each other's minds.

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http://tinyurl.com/c5qozb6

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We have too many bad dreams.

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That's certainly one theory.

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