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Humans Are Very Good At Dreaming, Although You'd Never Know It From Your Television.
-Carl Sagan
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Humans Are Very Good

Carl Sagan
...
Humans Are Very Good At Dreaming, Although You'd Never Know It From Your Television.

Understanding the Quote: "humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from..."

This quote by Carl Sagan reflects deeply on the theme of dream. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Dream, Television, Vastness, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Carl Sagan interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan is celebrated for insightful thoughts on dream and television. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Dream
Television
Vastness
More From Carl Sagan
The Big Bang Is Our Modern Scientific Creation Myth. It Comes From The Same Human Need To Solve The Cosmological Riddle [where Did The Universe Come From?]
Bangs
Needs
Creation
We Make Our World Significant By The Courage Of Our Questions And The Depth Of Our Answers
Patience
Our World
Depth
The Candle Flame Gutters. Its Little Pool Of Light Trembles. Darkness Gathers. The Demons Begin To Stir.
Light
Flames
Darkness
It's A Lazy Saturday Afternoon, There's A Couple Lying Naked In Bed Reading Encyclopediea Brittannica To Each Other, And Arguing About Whether The Andromeda Galaxy Is More 'numinous' Than The Ressurection. Do They Know How To Have A Good Time, Or Don't They?
Couple
Lying
Reading
As The Ancient Myth Makers Knew, We Are Children Equally Of The Earth And The Sky.
Children
Sky
Earth
Ask Courageous Questions. Do Not Be Satisfied With Superficial Answers. Be Open To Wonder And At The Same Time Subject All Claims To Knowledge, Without Exception, To Intense Skeptical Scrutiny. Be Aware Of Human Fallibility. Cherish Your Species And Your Planet.
Answers
Courageous
Wonder
All Of The Rocky And Metallic Material We Stand On, The Iron In Our Blood, The Calcium In Our Teeth, The Carbon In Our Genes Were Produced Billions Of Years Ago In The Interior Of A Red Giant Star. We Are Made Of Star Stuff.
Stars
Blood
Years
One Of The Great Commandments Of Science Is, 'mistrust Arguments From Authority'. (scientists, Being Primates, And Thus Given To Dominance Hierarchies, Of Course Do Not Always Follow This Commandment.)
Hierarchy
Dominance
Argument
I Set Before You Two Ways: You Can Use Your Technology To Destroy Yourselves Or To Carry You To The Planets And The Stars. It's Up To You.
Stars
Technology
Two
We Invest Far Off Places With A Certain Romance... Long Summers, Mild Winters, Rich Harvests, Plentiful Game; None Of Them Lasts For Ever. Your Own Life, Or Your Bands, Or Even Your Species - Might Be Owed To A Restless Few, Drawn By A Craving They Can Hardly Articulate Or Understand, To Undiscovered Lands, And New Worlds.
Summer
Winter
Land
[one's] Inability To Invalidate Your Hypothesis Is Not At All The Same Thing As Proving It True.
Inability
Hypothesis
Prove
Our Perceptions Are Fallible. We Sometimes See What Isn't There. We Are Prey To Optical Illusions. Occasionally We Hallucinate. We Are Error-prone.
Errors
Perception
Optical Illusions
If You Want To Save Your Child From Polio, You Can Pray Or You Can Inoculate....try Science.
Atheist
Children
Religion
The Way To Find Out About Our Place In The Universe Is By Examining The Universe And By Examining Ourselves - Without Preconceptions, With As Unbiased A Mind As We Can Muster.
Mind
Unbiased
Way
If You Are Only Skeptical, Then No New Ideas Make It Through To You.
Science
Acceptance
Ideas
Arguments From Authority Carry Little Weight – Authorities Have Made Mistakes In The Past. They Will Do So Again In The Future. Perhaps A Better Way To Say It Is That In Science There Are No Authorities; At Most, There Are Experts.
Mistake
Past
Way
Since, In The Long Run, Every Planetary Society Will Be Endangered By Impacts From Space, Every Surviving Civilization Is Obliged To Become Spacefaring — Not Because Of Exploratory Or Romantic Zeal, But For The Most Practical Reason Imaginable: Staying Alive.
Running
Responsibility
Space
Stars Are Phoenixes, Rising From Their Own Ashes.
Stars
Phoenix
Ashes
Extinction Is The Rule. Survival Is The Exception.
Nature
Mass Extinction
Exception To The Rule
We've Arranged A Civilization In Which Most Crucial Elements Profoundly Depend On Science And Technology.
Technology
Civilization
Elements
The Visions We Offer Our Children Shape The Future.
Children
Vision
Shapes
The Price We Pay For Anticipation Of The Future Is Anxiety About It
Anxiety
Pay
Anticipation
I Also Wish That The Pledge Of Allegiance Were Directed At The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights, As It Is When The President Takes His Oath Of Office, Rather Than To The Flag And The Nation
Rights
Oath Of Office
Wish
Humans Are Very Good At Dreaming, Although You'd Never Know It From Your Television.
Dream
Television
Vastness
What A Splendid Perspective Contact With A Profoundly Different Civilization Might Provide! In A Cosmic Setting Vast And Old Beyond Ordinary Human Understanding We Are A Little Lonely, And We Ponder The Ultimate Significance, If Any, Of Our Tiny But Exquisite Blue Planet, The Earth.... In The Deepest Sense The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence Is A Search For Ourselves.
Lonely
Blue
Civilization
If We Are To Survive, Our Loyalties Must Be Broadened Further, To Include The Whole Human Community, The Entire Planet Earth.
Loyalty
Community
Cosmos
I Think The Discomfort That Some People Feel In Going To The Monkey Cages At The Zoo Is A Warning Sign.
Zoos
Thinking
People
War Is Murder Writ Large.
War
Murder
When You Buy A Used Car, You Kick The Tires, You Look At The Odometer, You Open Up The Hood. If You Do Not Feel Yourself An Expert In Automobile Engines, You Bring A Friend Who Is. And You Do This With Something As Unimportant As An Automobile. But On The Issues Of The Transcendent, Of Ethics, Of Morals, Of The Origins Of The World, Of The Nature Of Human Beings, On Those Issues Should We Not Insist Upon At Least Equally Skeptical Scrutiny?
Issues
Car
World
We Live On A Hunk Of Rock And Metal That Circles A Humdrum Star That Is One Of 400 Billion Other Stars That Make Up The Milky Way Galaxy Which Is One Of Billions Of Other Galaxies Which Make Up A Universe Which May Be One Of A Very Large Number, Perhaps An Infinite Number, Of Other Universes. That Is A Perspective On Human Life And Our Culture That Is Well Worth Pondering.
Stars
Rocks
Circles
When You Realize That No One Really Knows What They Are Doing And That Everyone Is Doing The Best They Can According To Their Own Level Of Consciousness, Life Gets A Lot Easier. Skeptical Scrutiny Is The Means, In Both Science And Religion, By Which Deep Thoughts Can Be Winnowed From Deep Nonsense.
Mean
Deep Thought
Levels
The Open Road Still Softly Calls, Like A Nearly Forgotten Song Of Childhood
Song
Childhood
Forgotten
There Are Wonders Enough Out There Without Our Inventing Any.
Pain
Wonder
Injury
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.
Men
Mozambique
Stories
Whenever Our Ethnic Or National Prejudices Are Aroused, In Times Of Scarcity, During Challenges To National Self Esteem Or Nerve, When We Agonize About Our Diminished Cosmic Place And Purpose, Or When Fanaticism Is Bubbling Up Around Us - Then, Habits Of Thought Familiar From Ages Past Reach For The Controls.
Self Esteem
Past
Challenges
When A Honeybee Dies It Releases A Death Pheromone, A Characteristic Odour That Signals The Survivors To Remove It From The Hive. The Corpse Is Promptly Pushed And Tugged Out Of The Hive. The Death Pheromone Is Oleic Acid. What Happens If A Live Bee Is Dabbed With A Drop Of Oleic Acid? Then No Matter How Strapping And Vigourous It Might Be, It Is Carried Kicking And Screaming Out Of The Hive.
Science
Survivor
Kicking
You Mustn't Think Of The Universe As A Wilderness. It Hasn't Been That For Billions Of Years," He Said. "think Of It More As... ..cultivated.
Thinking
Years
Wilderness
The Dumbing Down Of America Is Evident In The Slow Decay Of Substantive Content, A Kind Of Celebration Of Ignorance.
Ignorance
America
Decay
A Multitude Of Aspects Of The Natural World That Were Considered Miraculous Only A Few Generations Ago Are Now Thoroughly Understood In Terms Of Physics And Chemistry.
Religion
Generations
World
Even Through Your Hardest Days, Remember We Are All Made Of Stardust.
Remember
Stardust
Made
In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.
Emptiness
Found
Contact
We Are Star Stuff Harvesting Sunlight.
Stars
Stuff
Sunlight
When Permitted To Listen To Alternative Opinions And Engage In Substantive Debate, People Have Been Known To Change Their Minds. It Can Happen.
People
Mind
Alternatives
But Amid Much Elegance And Precision, The Details Of Life And The Universe Also Exhibit Haphazard, Jury-rigged Arrangements And Much Poor Planning. What Shall We Make Of This: An Edifice Abandoned Early In Construction By The Architect?
Details Of Life
Atheism
Poor Planning
We Are Made Of Star Stuff. For The Most Part, Atoms Heavier Than Hydrogen Were Created In The Interiors Of Stars And Then Expelled Into Space To Be Incorporated Into Later Stars. The Sun Is Probably A Third Generation Star.
Stars
Space
Atoms
Coal, Oil And Gas Are Called Fossil Fuels, Because They Are Mostly Made Of The Fossil Remains Of Beings From Long Ago. The Chemical Energy Within Them Is A Kind Of Stored Sunlight Originally Accumulated By Ancient Plants. Our Civilization Runs By Burning The Remains Of Humble Creatures Who Inhabited The Earth Hundreds Of Millions Of Years Before The First Humans Came On The Scene. Like Some Ghastly Cannibal Cult, We Subsist On The Dead Bodies Of Our Ancestors And Distant Relatives. - Dr. Carl Sagan
Running
Humble
Long Ago
The Universe Forces Those Who Live In It To Understand It.
Force
Regularity
Predictability
Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, And Albert Einstein Made Serious Mistakes. But The Scientific Enterprise Arranges Things So That Teamwork Prevails: What One Of Us, Even The Most Brilliant Among Us, Misses, Another Of Us, Even Someone Much Less Celebrated And Capable, May Detect And Rectify.
Teamwork
Mistake
Missing
Religions Contradict One Another-on Small Matters, Such As Whether We Should Put On A Hat Or Take One Off On Entering A House Of Worship, Or Whether We Should Eat Beef And Eschew Pork Or The Other Way Around, All The Way To The Most Central Issues, Such As Whether There Are No Gods, One God, Or Many Gods.
Religious
Issues
House
For A Long Time The Human Instinct To Understand Was Thwarted By Facile Religious Explanations.
Religious
Time
Long
First Rule In Government Spending: Why Build One When You Can Have Two At Twice The Price?
Two
Government
Firsts
The Method Of Science Is Tried And True. It Is Not Perfect, It's Just The Best We Have. And To Abandon It, With Its Skeptical Protocols, Is The Pathway To A Dark Age.
Dark
Science
Perfect
The Open Road Still Softly Calls.
Stills
Sedentary
Open Road
An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed.
War
Doomed
Organisms
History Is Full Of People Who Out Of Fear, Or Ignorance, Or Lust For Power Has Destroyed Knowledge Of Immeasurable Value Which Truly Belongs To Us All. We Must Not Let It Happen Again.
Truth
Ignorance
People
And You Are Made Of A Hundred Trillion Cells. We Are, Each Of Us, A Multitude.
Cells
Hundred
Made
For Me, The Most Ironic Token Of [the First Human Moon Landing] Is The Plaque Signed By President Richard M. Nixon That Apollo 11 Took To The Moon. It Reads, ‘we Came In Peace For All Mankind.’ As The United States Was Dropping Seven And A Half Megatons Of Conventional Explosives On Small Nations In Southeast Asia, We Congratulated Ourselves On Our Humanity. We Would Harm No One On A Lifeless Rock.
Moon
Rocks
Humanity
We Seem, These Days, Much More Willing To Recognize The Perils Before Us Than We Were Even A Decade Ago. The Newly Recognized Dangers Threaten All Of Us, Equally. No One Can Say How It Will Turn Out Down Here. But This Is Also, We May Note, The First Time That A Species Has Become Able To Journey To The Planets And The Stars. Sailors On A Becalmed Sea, We Sense A Stirring Of The Breeze.
Stars
Journey
Sea
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 Continuously At 1 G Until We Arrive At Our Destination. It Would Take A Day To Get To Mars, A Week And A Half To Pluto, A Year To The Oort Cloud, And A Few Years To The Nearest Stars.
Stars
Clouds
Years
If We Offer Too Much Silent Assent About Mysticism And Superstition - Even When It Seems To Be Doing A Little Good - We Abet A General Climate In Which Scepticism Is Considered Impolite, Science Tiresome, And Rigorous Thinking Somehow Stuffy And Inappropriate.
Thinking
Superstitions
Too Much
There Are Huge Advertising Budgets Only When There's No Difference Between The Products. If The Products Really Were Different, People Would Buy The One That's Better. Advertising Teaches People Not To Trust Their Judgment. Advertising Teaches People To Be Stupid.
Stupid
Differences
People
I Promise To Question Everything My Leaders Tell Me. I Promise To Use My Critical Faculties. I Promise To Develop My Independence Of Thought. I Promise To Educate Myself So I Can Make My Own Judgments.
Leader
Independence
Promise
That Kind Of Skeptical, Questioning, "don't Accept What Authority Tells You" Attitude Of Science - Is Also Nearly Identical To The Attitude Of Mind Necessary For A Functioning Democracy. Science And Democracy Have Very Consonant Values And Approaches, And I Don't Think You Can Have One Without The Other.
Attitude
Thinking
Democracies Have
For All Its Material Advantages, The Sedentary Life Has Left Us Edgy, Unfulfilled, Even After 400 Generations In Villages And Cities, We Haven't Forgotten: The Open Road Still Softly Calls Like A Nearly Forgotten Song Of Childhood.
Song
Cities
Childhood
Science Is Based On Experiment, On A Willingness To Challenge Old Dogma, On An Openness To See The Universe As It Really Is. Accordingly, Science Sometimes Requires Courage - At The Very Least The Courage To Question The Conventional Wisdom.
Challenges
Dogma
Sometimes
[s]cience Has Itself Become A Kind Of Religion.
Religion
Atheism
Kind
To Read Is To Voyage Through Time.
Time
Voyages
Rough Times
In The Vastness Of Space And The Immensity Of Time, It Is My Joy To Share A Planet And An Epoch With Annie.
Time
Space
Joy
But I Could Be Wrong.
All Colours Are Arbitrary.
Arbitrary
Colour
We Are All Star Stuff.
Stars
Stuff
All Stars
My Deeply Held Belief Is That If A God Of Anything Like The Traditional Sort Exists, Our Curiosity And Intelligence Are Provided By Such A God. We Would Be Unappreciative Of Those Gifts (as Well As Unable To Take Such A Course Of Action) If We Suppressed Our Passion To Explore The Universe And Ourselves. On The Other Hand, If Such A Traditional God Does Not Exist, Our Curiosity And Our Intelligence Are The Essential Tools For Managing Our Survival. In Either Case, The Enterprise Of Knowledge Is Consistent With Both Science And Religion, And Is Essential For The Welfare Of The Human Species.
Passion
Hands
Survival
Once We Overcome Our Fear Of Being Tiny, We Find Ourselves On The Threshold Of A Vast And Awesome Universe That Utterly Dwarfs — In Time, In Space, And In Potential — The Tidy Anthropocentric Proscenium Of Our Ancestors.
Space
Overcoming
Tiny
Too Much Openness And You Accept Every Notion, Idea, And Hypothesis-which Is Tantamount To Knowing Nothing. Too Much Skepticism-especially Rejection Of New Ideas Before They Are Adequately Tested-and You're Not Only Unpleasantly Grumpy, But Also Closed To The Advance Of Science. A Judicious Mix Is What We Need.
Knowledge
Acceptance
Science
My Parents Were Not Scientists. They Knew Almost Nothing About Science. But In Introducing Me Simultaneously To Skepticism And To Wonder, They Taught Me The Two Uneasily Cohabiting Modes Of Thought That Are Central To The Scientific Method.
Science
Two
Parent
The Prediction I Can Make With The Highest Confidence Is That The Most Amazing Discoveries Will Be The Ones We Are Not Today Wise Enough To Foresee.
Wise
Discovery
Today
Which Aspects Of Our Nature Will Prevail Is Uncertain, Particularly When Our Visions And Prospects Are Bound To One Small Part Of The Small Planet Earth. But Up There In The Cosmos An Inescapable Perspective Awaits.
Perspective
Vision
Cosmos
While Our Behavior Is Still Significantly Controlled By Our Genetic Inheritance, We Have, Through Our Brains, A Much Richer Opportunity To Blaze New Behavioral And Cultural Pathways On Short Timescales.
Science
Opportunity
Brain
The Earth Is A Very Small Stage In A Vast Cosmic Arena. Think Of The Rivers Of Blood Spilled By All Those Generals And Emperors So That, In Glory And Triumph, They Could Become The Momentary Masters Of A Fraction Of A Dot. Think Of The Endless Cruelties Visited By The Inhabitants Of One Corner Of This Pixel On The Scarcely Distinguishable Inhabitants Of Some Other Corner, How Frequent Their Misunderstandings, How Eager They Are To Kill One Another, How Fervent Their Hatreds.
Humility
Thinking
Compassion
Science Cuts Two Ways, Of Course; Its Products Can Be Used For Both Good And Evil. But There's No Turning Back From Science. The Early Warnings About Technological Dangers Also Come From Science.
Cutting
Two
Evil
An Extraterrestrial Being, Newly Arrived On Earth - Scrutinizing What We Mainly Present To Our Children In Television, Radio, Movies, Newspapers, Magazines, The Comics, And Many Books - Might Easily Conclude That We Are Intent On Teaching Them Murder, Rape, Cruelty, Superstition, Credulity, And Consumerism. We Keep At It, And Through Constant Repetition Many Of Them Finally Get It.
Children
Book
Teaching
There Are In Fact 100 Billion Galaxies, Each Of Which Contain Something Like A 100 Billion Stars. Think Of How Many Stars, And Planets, And Kinds Of Life There May Be In This Vast And Awesome Universe.
Stars
Thinking
May
How Smart Does A Chimpanzee Have To Be Before Killing Him Constitutes Murder?
Smart
Doe
Murder
Since World War Ii, Japan Has Spawned Enormous Numbers Of New Religions Featuring The Supernatural.... In Thailand, Diseases Are Treated With Pills Manufactured From Pulverized Sacred Scripture. Witches Are Today Being Burned In South Africa.... The Worldwide Tm [transcendental Meditation] Organization Has An Estimated Valuation Of $3 Billion. For A Fee, They Promise To Make You Invisible, To Enable You To Fly.
Atheist
War
Numbers
Our Posturings, Our Imagined Self-importance , The Delusion That We Have Some Privileged Position In The Universe Are Challenged By This Point Of Pale Light.
Light
Self
Cosmos
At A Few Hundred Kilometers Altitude, The Earth Fills Half Your Sky, And The Band Of Blue That Stretches From Mindanao To Bombay, Which Your Eye Encompasses In A Single Glance, Can Break Your Heart With Its Beauty. Home You Think. Home. This Is My World. This Is Where I Come From. Everyone I Know, Everyone I Ever Heard Of, Grew Up Down There, Under That Relentless And Exquisite Blue.
Home
Heart
Eye
I Consider It An Extremely Dangerous Doctrine, Because The More Likely We Are To Assume That The Solution Comes From The Outside, The Less Likely We Are To Solve Our Problems Ourselves.
Philosophy
Religion
Doctrine
Our Loyalties Are To The Species And The Planet. We Speak For Earth. Our Obligation To Survive Is Owed Not Just To Ourselves But Also To That Cosmos, Ancient And Vast, From Which We Spring.
Loyalty
Spring
Survival
They (i. E., The Pythagoreans) Did Not Advocate The Free Confrontation Of Conflicting Points Of View. Instead, Like All Orthodox Religions, They Practised A Rigidity That Prevented Them From Correcting Their Errors.
Errors
Views
Rigidity
Indeed The Reasoned Criticism Of A Prevailing Belief Is A Service To The Proponents Of That Belief; If They Are Incapable Of Defending It, They Are Well Advised To Abandon It. This Self-questioning And Error-correcting Aspect Of The Scientific Method Is Its Most Striking Property.
Errors
Self Questioning
Criticism
The Evidence, So Far At Least And Laws Of Nature Aside, Does Not Require A Designer. Maybe There Is One Hiding, Maddeningly Unwilling To Be Revealed.
Law
Atheism
Doe
Every Thinking Person Fears Nuclear War, And Every Technological State Plans For It. Everyone Knows It Is Madness, And Every Nation Has An Excuse
War
Thinking
Nuclear
Ours Is The First Generation That Has Grown Up With Science-fiction Ideas.
Ideas
Generations
Fiction
[n]o Scientist Likes To Be Criticized. ... But You Don't Reply To Critics: "wait A Minute, Wait A Minute; This Is A Really Good Idea. I'm Very Fond Of It. It's Done You No Harm. Please Don't Attack It." That's Not The Way It Goes. The Hard But Just Rule Is That If The Ideas Don't Work, You Must Throw Them Away. Don't Waste Any Neurons On What Doesn't Work. Devote Those Neurons To New Ideas That Better Explain The Data. Valid Criticism Is Doing You A Favor.
Science
Data
Ideas
We Are, In A Way, Temporary Ambulatory Repositories For Our Nucleic Acids. This Does Not Deny Our Humanity; It Does Not Prevent Us From Pursuing The Good, The True And The Beautiful. But It Would Be A Great Mistake To Ignore Where We Have Come From In Our Attempt To Determine Where We Are Going.
Beautiful
Mistake
Humanity
Ask Courageous Questions. Do Not Be Satisfied With Superficial Answers.
Answers
Courageous
Superficial
There Are Naive Questions, Tedious Questions, Ill-phrased Questions, Questions Put After Inadequate Self-criticism. But Every Question Is A Cry To Understand The World. There Is No Such Thing As A Dumb Question.
Self
Dumb
Criticism
It Seems Madness To Say, 'we're Worried That They're Going To Become Addicted To Marijuana' -- There's No Evidence Whatever That It's An Addictive Drug, But Even If It Were, These People Are Dying, What Are We Saving Them From?
Marijuana
People
Drug
There Is A Lurking Fear That Some Things Are Not “meant" To Be Known, That Some Inquiries Are Too Dangerous For Human Beings To Make.
Keeping Secrets
Some Things Are Meant To Be
Known
Every Kid Starts Out As A Natural-born Scientist, And Then We Beat It Out Of Them. A Few Trickle Through The System With Their Wonder And Enthusiasm For Science Intact.
Children
Kids
Science
Any Sufficiently Crisp Question Can Be Answered By A Single Binary Digit-0 Or 1, Yes Or No.
Binary
Yes Or No
Crisps
But Nature Is Always More Subtle, More Intricate, More Elegant Than What We Are Able To Imagine.
Able
Imagine
Subtle
One Of The Great Commandments Of Science Is: 'mistrust Arguments From Authority.'
Argument
Authority
Primates
Quickly Capping 363 Oil Well Fires In A War Zone Is Impossible. The Fires Would Burn Out Of Control Until They Put Themselves Out... The Resulting Soot Might Well Stretch Over All Of South Asia... It Could Be Carried Around The World... [and] The Consequences Could Be Dire. Beneath Such A Pall Sunlight Would Be Dimmed, Temperatures Lowered And Droughts More Frequent. Spring And Summer Frosts May Be Expected... This Endangerment Of The Food Supplies... Appears To Be Likely Enough That It Should Affect The War Plans.
Summer
Spring
War
On The Day That We Do Discover That We Are Not Alone, Our Society May Begin To Evolve And Transform In Some Incredible And Wondrous New Ways.
May
Our Society
Way
Demon Mean Knowledge In Greek, Especially About The Material World. Science Means Knowledge In Latin. A Jurisdictional Dispute Is Exposed, Even If We Look No Further
Latin
Mean
Science
Except In Pure Mathematics, Nothing Is Known For Certain (although Much Is Certainly False).
Mathematics
Certain
Pure
Organic As A Dandelion Seed, [the Ship Of Our Imagination] Will Carry Us To Worlds Of Dreams And Worlds Of Facts
Dream
Imagination
World
Those Afraid Of The Universe As It Really Is, Those Who Pretend To Nonexistent Knowledge And Envision A Cosmos Centered On Human Beings Will Prefer The Fleeting Comforts Of Superstition.
Comfort
Cosmos
Fleeting
A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits / Not A Sunrise, But A Galaxy-rise / A Morning Filled With 400 Billion Suns / The Rising Of The Milky Way
Morning
Sunrise
Dawn
There Is Perhaps No Better A Demonstration Of The Folly Of Human Conceits Than This Distant Image Of Our Tiny World.
Space
Earth Day
Tiny
The Gears Of Poverty, Ignorance, Hopelessness And Low Self-esteem Interact To Create A Kind Of Perpetual Failure Machine That Grinds Down Dreams From Generation To Generation. We All Bear The Cost Of Keeping It Running. Illiteracy Is Its Linchpin.
Running
Dream
Self Esteem
Any Civilization That Doesn't Develop Space Travel Dies.
Civilization
Space
Space Travel
He Sought A Way To Preserve The Past. John Hershel Was One Of The Founders Of A New Form Of Time Travel.... A Means To Capture Light And Memories. He Actually Coined A Word For It... Photography. When You Think About It, Photography Is A Form Of Time Travel. This Man Is Staring At Us From Across The Centuries, A Ghost Preserved By Light.
Photography
Memories
Mean
That We Can Now Think Of No Mechanism For Astrology Is Relevant But Unconvincing. No Mechanism Was Known, For Example, For Continental Drift When It Was Proposed By Wegener. Nevertheless, We See That Wegener Was Right, And Those Who Objected On The Grounds Of Unavailable Mechanism Were Wrong.
Thinking
Astrology
Example
A New Consciousness Is Developing Which Sees The Earth As A Single Organism And Recognizes That An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed. We Are One Planet. One Of The Great Revelations Of The Age Of Space Exploration Is The Image Of The Earth Finite And Lonely, Somehow Vulnerable, Bearing The Entire Human Species Through The Oceans Of Space And Time.
Lonely
War
Ocean
All Over The World There Are Enormous Numbers Of Smart, Even Gifted, People Who Harbor A Passion For Science. But That Passion Is Unrequited. Surveys Suggest That Some 95% Of Americans Are "scientifically Illiterate." That's...the Same Fraction...of Slaves Who Were Illiterate Before The Civil War.
War
Smart
Passion
In The Fabric Of Space And In The Nature Of Matter, As In A Great Work Of Art, There Is, Written Small, The Artist's Signature.
Art
Nature
Space
The Old Appeals To Racial, Sexual And Religious Chauvinism To Rabid Nationalist Fervor, Are Beginning Not To Work.
Religious
Zeitgeist
Appeals
Science Is More Than A Body Of Knowledge. It's A Way Of Thinking: A Way Of Skeptically Interrogating The Universe.
Thinking
Body
Way
Probably A Dozen Times Since Their Death I've Heard My Mother Or Father, In An Ordinary Conversational Tone Of Voice, Call My Name. They Had Called My Name Often During My Life With Them ... It Doesn't Seem Strange To Me.
Mother
Father
Science
In Italy, The Inquisition Was Condemning People To Death Until The End Of The Eighteenth Century, And Inquisitional Torture Was Not Abolished In The Catholic Church Until 1816. The Last Bastion Of Support For The Reality Of Witchcraft And The Necessity Of Punishment Has Been The Christian Churches.
Christian
Atheist
Reality
The Fact That So Little Of The Findings Of Modern Science Is Prefigured In Scripture To My Mind Casts Further Doubt On It Divine Inspiration.
Inspiration
Doubt
Mind
[science] Is Not Perfect. It Can Be Misused. It Is Only A Tool. But It Is By Far The Best Tool We Have, Self-correcting, Ongoing, Applicable To Everything. It Has Two Rules. First: There Are No Sacred Truths; All Assumptions Must Be Critically Examined; Arguments From Authority Are Worthless. Second: Whatever Is Inconsistent With The Facts Must Be Discarded Or Revised. ... The Obvious Is Sometimes False; The Unexpected Is Sometimes True.
Science
Self
Two
If Chimpanzees Have Consciousness, If They Are Capable Of Abstractions, Do They Not Have What Until Now Has Been Described As 'human Rights'? How Smart Does A Chimp Have To Be Before Killing Him Constitutes Murder?
Smart
Animal
Rights
I Can Find In My Undergraduate Classes, Bright Students Who Do Not Know That The Stars Rise And Set At Night, Or Even That The Sun Is A Star.
Stars
Night
Class
Centuries Hence, When Current Social And Political Problems May Seem As Remote As The Problems Of The Thirty Years' War Are To Us, Our Age May Be Remembered Chiefly For One Fact: It Was The Time When The Inhabitants Of The Earth First Made Contact With The Vast Cosmos In Which Their Small Planet Is Embedded.
War
Years
Space
The Surface Of The Earth Is The Shore Of The Cosmic Ocean.
Ocean
Cosmos
Ankles
A Celibate Clergy Is An Especially Good Idea, Because It Tends To Suppress Any Hereditary Propensity Toward Fanaticism.
Atheist
Science
Ideas
Societies Will, Of Course, Wish To Exercise Prudence In Deciding Which Technologies That Is, Which Applications Of Science Are To Be Pursued And Which Not. But Without Funding Basic Research, Without Supporting The Acquisition Of Knowledge For Its Own Sake, Our Options Become Dangerously Limited.
Exercise
Technology
Wish
Better By Far To Embrace The Hard Truth Than A Reassuring Fable. If We Crave Some Cosmic Purpose, Then Let Us Find Ourselves A Worthy Goal.
Goal
Custodians
Purpose
We Are Like Butterflies Who Flutter For A Day And Think It Is Forever.
Time
Butterfly
Thinking
Scientists Can Routinely Predict A Solar Eclipse, To The Minute, A Millennium In Advance. You Can Go To The Witch Doctor To Lift The Spell That Causes Your Pernicious Anaemia, Or You Can Take Vitamin B12. If You Want To Save Your Child From Polio, You Can Pray Or You Can Inoculate. If You're Interested In The Sex Of Your Unborn Child, You Can Consult Plumb-bob Danglers All You Want . . . But They'll Be Right, On Average, Only One Time In Two. If You Want Real Accuracy . . . Try Amniocentesis And Sonograms. Try Science.
Sex
Children
Real
We All Have A Thirst For Wonder. It's A Deeply Human Quality. Science And Religion Are Both Bound Up With It. What I'm Saying Is, You Don't Have To Make Stories Up, You Don't Have To Exaggerate. There's Wonder And Awe Enough In The Real World. Nature's A Lot Better At Inventing Wonders Than We Are.
Real
Quality
Stories
Is Mankind Alone In The Universe? Or Are There Somewhere Other Intelligent Beings Looking Up Into Their Night Sky From Very Different Worlds And Asking The Same Kind Of Question?
Intelligent
Night
Sky
After I Give Lectures-on Almost Any Subject-i Am Often Asked, "do You Believe In Ufos?" I'm Always Struck By How The Question Is Phrased, The Suggestion That This Is A Matter Of Belief And Not Evidence. I'm Almost Never Asked, "how Good Is The Evidence That Ufos Are Alien Spaceships?"
Believe
Giving
Suggestions
Whatever The Reason You're On Mars, I'm Glad You're There, And I Wish I Was With You.
Wish
Mars
Reason
Otherwise We Don't Run The Government The Government Runs Us
Running
Government
All Civilizations Become Either Spacefaring Or Extinct.
Science
Civilization
It Is The Responsibility Of Scientists Never To Suppress Knowledge, No Matter How Awkward That Knowledge Is, No Matter How It May Bother Those In Power; We Are Not Smart Enough To Decide Which Pieces Of Knowledge Are Permissible, And Which Are Not.
Smart
Knowledge
Responsibility
You're An Interesting Species, An Interesting Mix. You're Capable Of Such Beautiful Dreams And Such Horrible Nightmares. You Feel So Lost, So Cut Off, So Alone, Only You're Not. See, In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.
Beautiful
Dream
Cutting
There Are Lots Of Ways To Communicate What We Know, But Few Ways To Communicate What We Feel. Music Is One Way To Communicate Emotions.
Music
Way
Emotion
A New Consciousness Is Developing Which Sees The Earth As A Single Organism And Recognizes That An Organism At War With Itself Is Doomed. We Are One Planet.
War
Earth
Consciousness
It Means Nothing To Be Open To A Proposition We Don't Understand.
Atheist
Mean
Religion
We Need To Reduce Military Budgets; Raise Living Standards; Engender Respect For Learning; Support Science, Scholarship, Invention, And Industry; Promote Free Inquiry; Reduce Domestic Coercion; Involve The Workers More In Managerial Decisions; And Promote Genuine Respect And Understanding Derived From An Acknowledgement Of Our Common Humanity And Our Common Jeopardy.
Military
Common Humanity
Decision
Our Passion For Learning ... Is Our Tool For Survival.
Passion
Learning
Science
Goddard Represented A Unique Combination Of Visionary Dedication And Technological Brilliance. He Studied Physics Because He Needed Physics To Get To Mars. In Reading The Notebooks Of Robert Goddard, I Am Struck By How Powerful His Exploratory And Scientific Motivations Were - And How Influental Speculative Ideas, Even Erroneous Ones, Can Be On The Shaping Of The Future.
Notebook
Motivation
Powerful
If We Continue To Accumulate Only Power And Not Wisdom, We Will Surely Destroy Ourselves.
Ifs
Religions Are Tough. Either They Make No Contentions Which Are Subject To Disproof Or They Quickly Redesign Doctrine After Disproof. ... Near The Core Of The Religious Experience Is Something Remarkably Resistant To Rational Inquiry.
Religious
Science
Experience
If Our Long-term Survival Is At Stake, We Have A Basic Responsibility To Our Species To Venture To Other Worlds. Sailors On A Becalmed Sea, We Sense The Stirring Of A Breeze.
Responsibility
Sea
Other Worlds
The Impediment To Scientific Thinking Is Not, I Think, The Difficulty Of The Subject. Complex Intellectual Feats Have Been Mainstays Even Of Oppressed Cultures. Shamans, Magicians And Theologians Are Highly Skilled In Their Intricate And Arcane Arts. No, The Impediment Is Political And Hierarchical.
Art
Thinking
Political
Teller Contended, Not Implausibly, That Hydrogen Bombs Keep The Peace, Or At Least Prevent Thermonuclear War, Because The Consequences Of Warfare Between Nuclear Powers Are Now Too Dangerous. We Haven't Had A Nuclear War Yet, Have We? But All Such Arguments Assume That The Nuclear-armed Nations Are And Always Will Be, Without Exception, Rational Actors, And That Bouts Of Anger And Revenge And Madness Will Never Overtake Their Leaders (or Military And Secret Police Officers In Charge Of Nuclear Weapons). In The Century Of Hitler And Stalin, This Seems Ingenuous.
Revenge
Military
War
Our Species Needs, And Deserves, A Citizenry With Minds Wide Awake And A Basic Understanding Of How The World Works.
Education
Atheist
Thinking
Nothing Disturbs Me More Than The Glorification Of Stupidity.
Stupidity
Glorification
We Are Rare And Precious Because We Are Alive, Because We Can Think As Well As We Can. We Are Privileged To Influence And Perhaps Control Our Future. I Believe We Have An Obligation To Fight For Life On Earth - Not Just For Ourselves, But For All Those, Humans And Others, Who Came Before Us, And To Whom We Are Beholden, And For All Those Who, If We Are Wise Enough, Will Come After.
Wise
Believe
Fighting
You Are Worth About 3 Dollars Worth In Chemicals.
Dollars
Chemicals
If The Greenhouse Effect Is A Blanket In Which We Wrap Ourselves To Keep Warm, Nuclear Winter Kicks The Blanket Off.
Winter
Science
Nuclear
We Can Make A Similar Examination, But With Greater Uncertainty, Of The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis That Holds That A Wide Range Of Ufos Viewed On The Planet Earth Are Space Vehicles From Planets Of Other Stars.
Stars
Space
Earth
What Distinguishes Our Species Is Thought. The Cerebral Cortex Is In A Way A Liberation. We Need No Longer Be Trapped In The Genetically Inherited Behavior Patterns Of Lizards And Baboons: Territoriality And Aggression And Dominance Hierarchies. We Are Each Of Us Largely Responsible For What Gets Put In To Our Brains. For What As Adults We Wind Up Caring For And Knowing About. No Longer At The Mercy Of The Reptile Brain We Can Change Ourselves. Think Of The Possibilities.
Caring
Thinking
Wind
The Sacred Truth Of Science Is That There Are No Sacred Truths.
Sacred
Anything Else You're Interested In Is Not Going To Happen If You Can't Breathe The Air And Drink The Water. Don't Sit This One Out. Do Something. You Are By Accident Of Fate Alive At An Absolutely Critical Moment In The History Of Our Planet.
Fate
Rivers
Air
There Are Many Hypotheses In Science Which Are Wrong. That’s Perfectly All Right: It’s The Aperture To Finding Out What’s Right. Science Is A Self-correcting Process.
Truth
Self
Aperture
Curiosity And The Urge To Solve Problems Are The Emotional Hallmarks Of Our Species.
Emotional
Curiosity
Problem
It Is The Tension Between Creativity And Skepticism That Has Produced The Stunning And Unexpected Findings Of Science.
Creativity
Science
Unexpected
I'd Like The [cosmos] Series To Be So Visually Stimulating That Somebody Who Isn't Even Interested In The Concepts Will Just Watch For The Effects. And I'd Like People Who Are Prepared To Do Some Thinking To Be Really Stimulated.
Science
Thinking
People
Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? . . . No Other Human Institution Comes Close.
Life
Reliability
Institutions
I Believe Our Future Depends Powerfully On How Well We Understand This Cosmos In Which We Float, Like A Mote Of Dust In The Morning Sky.
Morning
Believe
Dust
If We Are Not Able To Ask Skeptical Questions, To Interrogate Those Who Tell Us That Something Is True, To Be Skeptical Of Those In Authority, Then, We Are Up For Grabs For The Next Charlatan (political Or Religious) Who Comes Rambling Along.
Religious
Political
Rambling
If There Is Life, Then I Believe We Should Do Nothing To Disturb That Life. Mars Then, Belongs To The Martians, Even If They Are Microbes.
Believe
Mars
Should
The Cosmos Is All That Is Or Was Or Ever Will Be. Our Feeblest Contemplations Of The Cosmos Stir Us -- There Is A Tingling In The Spine, A Catch In The Voice, A Faint Sensation, As If A Distant Memory, Of Falling From A Height. We Know We Are Approaching The Greatest Of Mysteries.
Memories
Fall
Voice
The Cure For A Fallacious Argument Is A Better Argument, Not The Suppression Of Ideas.
Science
Ideas
Argument
We Are, In The Most Profound Sense, Children Of The Cosmos.
Children
Profound
Cosmos
The Significance Of Our Lives And Our Fragile Planet Is Then Determined Only By Our Own Wisdom And Courage. We Are The Custodians Of Life's Meaning. We Long For A Parent To Care For Us, To Forgive Us Our Errors, To Save Us From Our Childish Mistakes. But Knowledge Is Preferable To Ignorance. Better By Far To Embrace The Hard Truth Than A Reassuring Fable. If We Crave Some Cosmic Purpose, Then Let Us Find Ourselves A Worthy Goal.
Mistake
Ignorance
Errors
For All I Know We May Be Visited By A Different Extraterrestrial Civilization Every Second Tuesday, But There's No Support For This Appealing Idea. The Extraordinary Claims Are Not Supported By Extraordinary Evidence.
Civilization
Ideas
Tuesday
In Science It Often Happens That Scientists Say, 'you Know That's A Really Good Argument; My Position Is Mistaken,' And Then They Would Actually Change Their Minds And You Never Hear That Old View From Them Again. They Really Do It. It Doesn't Happen As Often As It Should, Because Scientists Are Human And Change Is Sometimes Painful. But It Happens Every Day. I Cannot Recall The Last Time Something Like That Happened In Politics Or Religion.
Change
Learning
Humility
If You Look At Earth From Space You See A Dot, That's Here. That's Home. That's Us. It Underscores The Responsibility To Deal More Kindly And Compassionately With One Another And To Preserve And Cherish That Pale Blue Dot, The Only Home We've Ever Known.
Responsibility
Home
Blue
Maybe It's A Little Early. Maybe The Time Is Not Quite Yet. But Those Other Worlds - Promising Untold Opportunities - Beckon. Silently, They Orbit The Sun, Waiting.
Opportunity
Other Worlds
Waiting
The Surface Of The Earth Is The Shore Of The Cosmic Ocean. From It We Have Learned Most Of What We Know. Recently, We Have Waded A Little Out To Sea, Enough To Dampen Our Toes Or, At Most, Wet Our Ankles. The Water Seems Inviting. The Ocean Calls.
Ocean
Sea
Water
It Is Of Interest To Note That While Some Dolphins Are Reported To Have Learned English - Up To Fifty Words Used In Correct Context - No Human Being Has Been Reported To Have Learned Dolphinese.
Motivational
Learning
Humility
I Believe That The Extraordinary Should Be Pursued. But Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.
Believe
Science
Claims
(when Asked Merely If They Accept Evolution, 45 Percent Of Americans Say Yes. The Figure Is 70 Percent In China.) When The Movie Jurassic Park Was Shown In Israel, It Was Condemned By Some Orthodox Rabbis Because It Accepted Evolution And Because It Taught That Dinosaurs Lived A Hundred Million Years Ago-when, As Is Plainly Stated At Every Rosh Hashonhan And Every Jewish Wedding Ceremony, The Universe Is Less Than 6,000 Years Old.
Atheist
Israel
Years
Discussing The Possibilities Of Extraterrestrial Life: I Would Love It Even If They Were Short, Sullen, Grumpy And Sexually Obsessed. But There Just Isn't Any Good Evidence.
Life
Sullen
Grumpy
The Visions We Offer Our Children Shape The Future. It _matters_ What Those Visions Are. Often They Become Self-fulfilling Prophecies. Dreams Are Maps.
Dream
Children
Future
Our Ancestors Worshipped The Sun, And They Were Not That Foolish. It Makes Sense To Revere The Sun And The Stars, For We Are Their Children.
Stars
Children
Sun
Not All Bits Have Equal Value.
Equal
Science And Technology
Bits
You Could Just As Well Say That An Agnostic Is A Deeply Religious Person With At Least A Rudimentary Knowledge Of Human Fallibility.
Religious
Agnostic
Wells
Frederick Douglas Taught That Literacy Is The Path From Slavery To Freedom. There Are Many Kinds Of Slavery And Many Kinds Of Freedom, But Reading Is Still The Path.
Reading
Slavery
Path
In Science It Often Happens That Scientists Say, "you Know That's A Really Good Argument; My Position Is Mistaken..."
Change
Science
Theoretical Physics
I Am Often Amazed At How Much More Capability And Enthusiasm For Science There Is Among Elementary School Youngsters Than Among College Students.
Education
School
Learning
Writing A Novel Is Like Trying To Solve A Very Long Mathematical Equation. Changing Anything Can Change Everything Else.
Writing
Mathematical Equations
Long
Writing Is Perhaps The Greatest Of Human Inventions.
Reading
Writing
Cosmos
Think Of How Many Religions Attempt To Validate Themselves With Prophecy. Think Of How Many People Rely On These Prophecies, However Vague, However Unfulfilled, To Support Or Prop Up Their Beliefs. Yet Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? ... No Other Human Institution Comes Close.
Science
Thinking
People
I Think The Health Of Our Civilization, The Depth Of Our Awareness About The Underpinnings Of Our Culture, And Our Concern For The Future, Can All Be Tested By How Well We Support Our Libraries.
Thinking
Civilization
Support
Science Is Much More Than A Body Of Knowledge. It Is A Way Of Thinking. This Is Central To Its Success. Science Invites Us To Let The Facts In, Even When They Don't Conform To Our Preconceptions. It Counsels Us To Carry Alternative Hypotheses In Our Heads And See Which Ones Best Match The Facts. It Urges On Us A Fine Balance Between No-holds-barred Openness To New Ideas, However Heretical, And The Most Rigorous Skeptical Scrutiny Of Everything - New Ideas And Established Wisdom.
Thinking
Ideas
Balance
Perhaps The Depth Of Love Can Be Calibrated By The Number Of Different Selves That Are Actively Involved In A Given Relationship.
Self
Numbers
Depth
One Glance At A Book And You Hear The Voice Of Another Person, Perhaps Someone Dead For 1,000 Years. To Read Is To Voyage Through Time.
Book
Years
Voice
The Wind Whips Through The Canyons Of The American Southwest, And There Is No One To Hear It But Us - A Reminder Of The 40,000 Generations Of Thinking Men And Women Who Preceded Us, About Whom We Know Almost Nothing, Upon Whom Our Civilization Is Based.
Men
Thinking
Wind
Personally, I Would Be Delighted If There Were A Life After Death, Especially If It Permitted Me To Continue To Learn About This World And Others, If It Gave Me A Chance To Discover How History Turns Out.
Death
History
Would Be
The Politicians And The Religious Leaders And The Weapons Scientists Have Been At It For A Long Time And They've Made A Thorough Mess Of It. I Mean, We're In Deep Trouble.
Religious
Atheist
Mean
It Is Far Better To Grasp The Universe As It Really Is Than To Persist In Delusion, However Satisfying And Reassuring.
Death
Witty
Atheist
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