Thomas Carlyle vs. Carl Sagan
Read 20 entries attributed to Thomas Carlyle alongside 20 attributed to Carl Sagan. Compare the wording and topic labels.
This page places 20 entries attributed to Thomas Carlyle 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: knowledge, life, truth, writing, religion, time. Shared labels do not by themselves demonstrate agreement, disagreement, or influence between the authors.
Attributed to Thomas Carlyle, entry #111361: "Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself."
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
Thomas Carlyle
1795 – 1881
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. Known as the "sage of Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the Victorian era.
"Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself."
#suffering"Religion was the pole-star for my father. Rude and uncultivated as he otherwise was, it made him and kept him "in all points a man." Oh! when I think that al…"
#knowledge"The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully."
#life"I esteem the modern error, That all goes by self-interest and the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that in short, there is nothing divine what…"
#truth"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all."
#politics"The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!"
#life"This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special diale…"
#writing"Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of his own soul; such as is vouchsafed still to all souls of men;—which Inner Light shone h…"
#religion"The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here."
#life"I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive; consider that. It was the eager inarti…"
#life"The all of things is an infinite conjugation of the verb to do."
"Oceans of horse-hair, continents of parchment, and learned-sergeant eloquence, were it continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigab…"
#knowledge"Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man! Hero- worship, true and blessed, or else …"
#religion"An intellectual dapperling of these times boasts chiefly of his irresistible perspicacity, his “dwelling in the daylight of truth,” and so forth; which, on e…"
#time"O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of …"
#books"For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing somethin…"
#knowledge"There is endless merit in a man's knowing when to have done."
#knowledge"Nay, am not I also the humble James Carlyle's work? I owe him much more than existence, I owe him a noble inspiring example . It was he exclusively that dete…"
#life"it is our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be a Statesman, or Chie…"
#justice": A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things."
#truthCarl 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