“The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten.”

— Carl Sagan , book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 188

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Carl Sagan 365

American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996

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