Mark Twain vs. Carl Sagan
Read 20 entries attributed to Mark Twain alongside 20 attributed to Carl Sagan. Compare the wording and topic labels.
This page places 20 entries attributed to Mark Twain alongside 20 attributed to Carl Sagan. Each selection is ordered by stored importance score. These are selections from QuoteLineage, not complete accounts of either author's work.
Topic labels present in both displayed selections: love, truth. Shared labels do not by themselves demonstrate agreement, disagreement, or influence between the authors.
Attributed to Mark Twain, entry #145: "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I…"
Attributed to Carl Sagan, entry #638: "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."
Side-by-Side Comparison
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910
Mark Twain (1835) was an American writer and humorist, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
"I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfe…"
#Ethics"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), ed. John Paul"
#Aesthetics"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
#Aesthetics"When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain."
#love"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
#Aesthetics"Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience"
#Human Nature"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."
#love"Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near m…"
#Ethics"He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty."
#Aesthetics"He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
#Aesthetics"I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
#Aesthetics"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
#justice"I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a divi…"
#humor"I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but …"
#truth"A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle."
#language"It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle i…"
#truth"I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war wherein he can spectac…"
#history"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."
#ethics"Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. We…"
#success"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
#creativityCarl Sagan
1934 – 1996
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. Initially an assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan later moved to Cornell, where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He played an active role in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager programs.
"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."
#love"In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work."
#writing"We find a set of data that strongly implies the presence of complex organic molecules in the outer solar system."
#truth"Where skeptical observation and discussion are suppressed, the truth is hidden. The proponents of such borderline beliefs, when criticized, often point to ge…"
#truth"The enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species."
#knowledge"There is a place with four suns in the sky — red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between th…"
#nature"Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g — what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma — to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continu…"
#time"“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” he returned. It was a phrase of hers that he had adopted “It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, and there’s this couple lyin…"
#time"Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God."
#religion"The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it. Foretelling disaster is probably not much fun; Pollyanna was much happier than Cassa…"
#nature"We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads — but to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, bu…"
#nature"Science is, at least in part, informed worship."
#science"If you know a thing only qualitatively, you know it no more than vaguely. If you know it quantitatively—grasping some numerical measure that distinguishes it…"
#knowledge"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
#nature"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."
#life"Humans are good, she knew, at discerning subtle patterns that are really there, but equally so at imagining them when they are altogether absent."
#friendship"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
#friendship"The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the search for a generally acceptable cosmic context for the human species. In the deepest sense, the search …"
#friendship"Astronomically, the U. S. S. R. and the United States are the same place."
#friendship"But our openness to the dazzling possibilities presented by modern science must be tempered by some hard-nosed skepticism. Many interesting possibilities sim…"
#knowledge