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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Sharon Begley on Carl Sagan, Newsweek, 1977

Science

The story behind the card

The sentence closes 'Seeking Other Worlds', a Newsweek article about the astronomer Carl Sagan published on 15 August 1977 and written by David Gelman with Sharon Begley and two other reporters. It was not in quotation marks: it was the writers' own summing-up. In 2015 Begley told Garson O'Toole, who runs the Quote Investigator website, that she had written it, because Newsweek had a nearly firm rule against ending a story on a quotation. Detached from the article, the line spread as Sagan's own words and is still widely quoted as his.

Türkçe oku
Bir yerlerde, inanılmaz bir şey bilinmeyi bekliyor.
Sharon Begley, Carl Sagan üzerine, Newsweek, 1977

Bu cümle, Newsweek'in 15 Ağustos 1977 tarihli, gökbilimci Carl Sagan'ı anlatan “Seeking Other Worlds” (Başka Dünyalar Ararken) başlıklı yazısının kapanışıdır. Yazıyı David Gelman, Sharon Begley ve iki muhabir daha birlikte hazırlamıştı. Cümle tırnak içinde değildi; yazarların kendi toparlamasıydı. Begley 2015'te, Quote Investigator sitesini yürüten Garson O'Toole'a cümleyi kendisinin yazdığını doğruladı: Newsweek'te yazıyı bir alıntıyla bitirmemek neredeyse değişmez bir kuraldı. Yazıdan koparılan cümle Sagan'ın kendi sözüymüş gibi yayıldı ve bugün de çoğu zaman öyle aktarılıyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Carl Sagan
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