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  • 2016-02-23 (xsd:date)
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  • 'If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth' (en)
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  • Though scientist Carl Sagan died in 1996, his work remained highly influential. One quote in particular attributed to Sagan regularly showed up on share-centric social media sites: If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth. So popular is the phrase that it has appeared as a print available for purchase: However, we were unable to find any versions of the quote published until mid-2013, long after Sagan's death. A frequently cited source for the attribution was the social literature site GoodReads, but we couldn't find the quote in any of his books. Another prominent placement of the phrase involved Sagan's Wikiquote page, under the misattributed section, which observed that the quote was built on a similar phrase in fantasy author P.C. Hodgell's novel Seeker's Mask: Hodgell commented on a Reddit page in February 2016, confirming that the quote appeared in her novel, but that she didn't get it from Sagan: As Hodgell indicated, the quote didn't appear to exist in the Sagan-attributed form until mid-2013. (Hodgell's novel appeared in 1994.) The likeliest trajectory is one of the most common for misattributed quotes: the phrase was dormant for nearly two decades, and then reached socially viral status only when a slightly rewritten version was incorrectly attached to a beloved science celebrity. However, Sagan really did write the following on the topic of truth: (en)
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