Long Quotes: Carl Sagan

August 3rd, 02010 by Tyler Emerson

Quotes related to long-term thinking. A new series. Have a favorite quote? Share it with us in comments.

“Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together – surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.”
– Carl Sagan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 02010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Long-term quotes.

http://longgame.org/ Matt Warren

I *love* Carl Sagan. That quote is just one of many reasons why. The man wasn't afraid to think big.
David

Viewed in this context the message of Love Jesus delivered seems prescient.
cobie

I wonder if Carl deliberately did not mention the non human community, which at this point seems just as essential to our survival as the other humans.
Cmoraga

“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect, or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me you have come to my gate. In another, I say these words, but am an error, a phantom.”

Jorge Luis Borges
Astropithecus

Yes I agree. And what will unite us is an extraterrestrial threat.

Long Quotes: Carl Sagan

The Long Now Blog

Categories

Archives

Meta