Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for … - Carl Sagan

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The hope that is left after all your hopes are gone - that is pure hope, rooted in the heart.

Carl Sagan

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

Regret, Pain, Compassion, Humans, Essential, Pretensions

Same Author Quotes

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Disservice, Doe, Exclusive, Mutually, Science, Spirituality

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

Celebration, Cosmos, Joining, Merging, Understanding

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

Awesome, Overcoming, Space, Threshold, Tiny, Utterly

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

Atheist, Doubt, Evidence, Inspire, Know, Times

We were wanderers from the beginning.

Beginning, Wanderers