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I Believe That Even A Smattering Of Such Findings In Modern Science And Mathematics Is Far More Compelling And Exciting Than Most Of The Doctrines Of Pseudoscience, Whose Practitioners Were Condemned As Early As The Fifth Century B.c. By The Ionian Philosopher Heraclitus As “nigh -walkers, Magicians, Priests Of Bacchus, Priestesses Of The Wine-vat, Mystery-mongers.” But Science Is More Intricate And Subtle, Reveals A Much Richer Imiverse, And Powerfully Evokes Our Sense Of Wonder.

-Carl Sagan

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I Believe That Even

Carl Sagan

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I Believe That Even A Smattering Of Such Findings In Modern Science And Mathematics Is Far More Compelling And Exciting Than Most Of The Doctrines Of Pseudoscience, Whose Practitioners Were Condemned As Early As The Fifth Century B.c. By The Ionian Philosopher Heraclitus As “nigh -walkers, Magicians, Priests Of Bacchus, Priestesses Of The Wine-vat, Mystery-mongers.” But Science Is More Intricate And Subtle, Reveals A Much Richer Imiverse, And Powerfully Evokes Our Sense Of Wonder.

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If The Constellations Had Been Named In The Twentieth Century, I Suppose We Would See Bicycles And Refrigerators In The Sky.

When You Make The Finding Yourself - Even If You're The Last Person On Earth To See The Light - You'll Never Forget It.

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.

I Would Love To Believe That When I Die I Will Live Again, That Some Thinking, Feeling, Remembering Part Of Me Will Continue. But As Much As I Want To Believe That, And Despite The Ancient And Worldwide Cultural Traditions That Assert An Afterlife, I Know Of Nothing To Suggest That It Is More Than Wishful Thinking.

Books Tap The Wisdom Of Our Species -- The Greatest Minds, The Best Teachers -- From All Over The World And From All Our History. And They're Patient.

Science Is Merely An Extremely Powerful Method Of Winnowing What's True From What Feels Good.

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.

Valid Criticism Does You A Favor.

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.

Science Is More Than A Body Of Knowledge. It's A Way Of Thinking: A Way Of Skeptically Interrogating The Universe.

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.

We On Earth Have Just Awakened To The Great Oceans Of Space And Time From Which We Have Emerged.

One Of The Reasons For Its Success Is That Science Has A Built-in, Error-correcting Machinery At Its Very Heart. Some May Consider This An Overbroad Characterization, But To Me Every Time We Exercise Self-criticism, Every Time We Test Our Ideas Against The Outside World, We Are Doing Science. When We Are Self-indulgent And Uncritical, When We Confuse Hopes And Facts, We Slide Into Pseudoscience And Superstition.

A Central Lesson Of Science Is That To Understand Complex Issues (or Even Simple Ones), We Must Try To Free Our Minds Of Dogma And To Guarantee The Freedom To Publish, To Contradict, And To Experiment. Arguments From Authority Are Unacceptable.

We Began As Wanderers, And We Are Wanderers Still.

We Are Star Stuff Harvesting Sunlight.

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.

Wisdom Lies In Understanding Our Limitations.

Stars Are Phoenixes, Rising From Their Own Ashes.

We Are Not Smart Enough To Decide Which Pieces Of Knowledge Are Permissible And Which Are Not.

Books Break The Shackles Of Time, Proof That Humans Can Work Magic.

But I Could Be Wrong.

In Exchange For Freedom Of Inquiry, Scientists Are Obliged To Explain Their Work.

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.

We On Earth Have Just Awakened To The Great Oceans Of Space And Time From Which We Have Emerged. We Are The Legacy Of 15 Billion Years Of Cosmic Evolution. We Have A Choice: We Can Enhance Life And Come To Know The Universe That Made Us, Or We Can Squander Our 15 Billion-year Heritage In Meaningless Self-destruction. What Happens In The First Second Of The Next Cosmic Year Depends On What We Do, Here And Now, With Our Intelligence And Our Knowledge Of The Cosmos.

The Apollo Pictures Of The Whole Earth Conveyed To Multitudes Something Well Known To Astronomers: On The Scale Of The Worlds - To Say Nothing Of Stars Or Galaxies - Humans Are Inconsequential, A Thin Film Of Life On An Obscure And Solitary Lump Of Rock And Metal

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?]

There Is No Other Species On Earth That Does Science. It Is, So Far, Entirely A Human Invention, Evolved By Natural Selection In The Cerebral Cortex For One Simple Reason: It Works. It 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.

If Some Good Evidence For Life After Death Were Announced, I'd Be Eager To Examine It; But It Would Have To Be Real Scientific Data, Not Mere Anecdote. As With The Face On Mars And Alien Abductions, Better The Hard Truth, I Say, Than The Comforting Fantasy.

[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.

Life Is But A Momentary Glimpse Of The Wonder Of This Astonishing Universe, And It Is Sad To See So Many Dreaming It Away On Spiritual Fantasy.

The Immense Distances To The Stars And The Galaxies Mean That We See Everything Ins Pace Int He Past, Some As They Were Before The Earth Came To Be. Telescopes Are Time Machines.

The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is A Kind Of Skywriting. At First It Seemed To Spell Out Our Continuing Complacency Before A Witch's Brew Of Deadly Perils. But Perhaps It Really Tells Of A Newfound Talent To Work Together To Protect The Global Environment.

I Would Be Very Ashamed Of My Civilization If We Did Not Try To Find Out If There Is Life In Outer Space.

We Live In A Society Exquisitely Dependent On Science And Technology, In Which Hardly Anyone Knows Anything About Science And Technology.

We Live At A Moment When Our Relationships To Each Other, And To All Other Beings With Whom We Share This Planet, Are Up For Grabs.

Our Relationship

There Are Many Other (besides Testosterone) Behaviour-eliciting Hormones Fundamental For Humen Well-being, Including Estrogen And Progesterone In Females. The Fact That Complex Behavioural Patterns Can Be Triggered By A Tiny Concentration Of Moleculas Coursing Through The Bloodstream, And That Different Animals Of The Same Species Generate Different Amounts Of These Hormones, Is Something Worth Thinking About When It's Time To Judge Such Matters As Free Will, Individual Responsibility, And Law And Order.

Nobody Listens To Mathematicians.

I’m Struck Again By The Irony That Spaceflight-conceived In The Cauldron Of Nationalist Rivalries And Hatreds-brings With It A Stunning Transnational Vision. You Spend Even A Little Time Contemplating The Earth From Orbit And The Most Deeply Engrained Nationalisms Begin To Erode. They Seem The Squabbles Of Mites On A Plum.

One Of The Saddest Lessons Of History Is This: If We’ve Been Bamboozled Long Enough, We Tend To Reject Any Evidence Of The Bamboozle. We’re No Longer Interested In Finding Out The Truth. The Bamboozle Has Captured Us. It’s Simply Too Painful To Acknowledge, Even To Ourselves, That We’ve Been Taken. Once You Give A Charlatan Power Over You, You Almost Never Get It Back.

...the Idea Of A Spiritual Part Of Our Nature That Survives Death, The Notion Of An Afterlife, Ought To Be Easy For Religions And Nations To Sell. This Is Not An Issue Of Which We Might Anticipate Widespread Skepticism. People Will Want To Believe It, Even If The Evidence Is Meager To Nil... Compelling Testimony ... Provides That Our Personality, Character, Memory ... Resides In The Matter Of The Brain, It Is Easy Not To Focus On It, To Find Ways To Evade The Weight Of The Evidence.

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.

If We Can't Think For Ourselves, If We're Unwilling To Question Authority, Then We're Just Putty In The Hands Of Those In Power. But If The Citizens Are Educated And Form Their Own Opinions, Then Those In Power Work For Us. In Every Country, We Should Be Teaching Our Children The Scientific Method And The Reasons For A Bill Of Rights. With It Comes A Certain Decency, Humility And Community Spirit. In The Demon-haunted World That We Inhabit By Virtue Of Being Human, This May Be All That Stands Between Us And The Enveloping Darkness.

Any Sufficiently Crisp Question Can Be Answered By A Single Binary Digit-0 Or 1, Yes Or No.

The Hindu Religion Is The Only One Of The World’s Great Faiths Dedicated To The Idea That The Cosmos Itself Undergoes An Immense, Indeed An Infinite, Number Of Deaths And Rebirths. It Is The Only Religion In Which The Time Scales Correspond, No Doubt By Accident, To Those Of Modern Scientific Cosmology. Its Cycles Run From Our Ordinary Day And Night To A Day And Night Of Brahma, 8.64 Billion Years Long, Longer Than The Age Of The Earth Or The Sun And About Half The Time Since The Big Bang.

With Insufficient Data It Is Easy To Go Wrong.

Curiosity And The Urge To Solve Problems Are The Emotional Hallmarks Of Our Species.

In Many Cultures It Is Customary To Answer That God Created The Universe Out Of Nothing. But This Is Mere Temporizing. If We Wish Courageously To Pursue The Question, We Must, Of Course Ask Next Where God Comes From? And If We Decide This To Be Unanswerable, Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Universe Has Always Existed?

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.

And After We Returned To The Savannahs And Abandoned The Trees, Did We Long For Those Great Graceful Leaps And Ecstatic Moments Of Weightlessness In The Shafts Of Sunlight Of The Forest Roof?

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.

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.

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.

If You Are Only Skeptical, Then No New Ideas Make It Through To You.

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.

Sailors On A Becalmed Sea, We Sense The Stirring Of A Breeze.

The Dumbing Down Of America Is Evident In The Slow Decay Of Substantive Content, A Kind Of Celebration Of Ignorance.

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

Before We Invented Civilization Our Ancestors Lived Mainly In The Open Out Under The Sky. Before We Devised Artificial Lights And Atmospheric Pollution And Modern Forms Of Nocturnal Entertainment We Watched The Stars. There Were Practical Calendar Reasons Of Course But There Was More To It Than That. Even Today The Most Jaded City Dweller Can Be Unexpectedly Moved Upon Encountering A Clear Night Sky Studded With Thousands Of Twinkling Stars. When It Happens To Me After All These Years It Still Takes My Breath Away.

If We Do Not Speak For Earth, Who Will? If We Are Not Committed To Our Own Survival, Who Will Be?

Where Did God Come From? If We Decide This Is An Unanswerable Question Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Origin Of The Universe Is An Unanswerable Question.

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.

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.

If God Is Omnipotent And Omniscient, Why Didn't He Start The Universe Out In The First Place So It Would Come Out The Way He Wants? Why's He Constantly Repairing And Complaining? No, There's One Thing The Bible Makes Clear: The Biblical God Is A Sloppy Manufacturer. He's Not Good At Design, He's Not Good At Execution. He'd Be Out Of Business, If There Was Any Competition.

Perhaps The Depth Of Love Can Be Calibrated By The Number Of Different Selves That Are Actively Involved In A Given Relationship.

Humans — Who Enslave, Castrate, Experiment On, And Fillet Other Animals — Have Had An Understandable Penchant For Pretending Animals Do Not Feel Pain. A Sharp Distinction Between Humans And 'animals' Is Essential If We Are To Bend Them To Our Will, Make Them Work For Us, Wear Them, Eat Them — Without Any Disquieting Tinges Of Guilt Or Regret. It Is Unseemly Of Us, Who Often Behave So Unfeelingly Toward Other Animals, To Contend That Only Humans Can Suffer. The Behavior Of Other Animals Renders Such Pretensions Specious. They Are Just Too Much Like Us.

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.

Ufos: The Reliable Cases Are Uninteresting And In The Interesting Cases Are Unreliable.

The Desire To Be Connected With The Cosmos Reflects A Profound Reality, But We Are Connected; Not In The Trivial Ways That Astrology Promises, But In The Deepest Ways.

It Is Said That Men May Not Be The Dreams Of The God, But Rather That The Gods Are The Dreams Of Men.

Science ... Looks Skeptically At All Claims To Knowledge, Old And New. It Teaches Not Blind Obedience To Those In Authority But To Vigorous Debate, And In Many Respects That's The Secret Of Its Success.

I Think The Discomfort That Some People Feel In Going To The Monkey Cages At The Zoo Is A Warning Sign.

There Are No Forbidden Questions In Science, No Matters Too Sensitive Or Delicate To Be Probed, No Sacred Truths.

Finding The Occasional Straw Of Truth Awash In A Great Ocean Of Confusion And Bamboozle Requires Intelligence, Vigilance, Dedication, And Courage. But If We Don't Practice These Tough Habits Of Thought, We Cannot Hope To Solve The Truly Serious Problems That Face Us --- And We Risk Becoming A Nation Of Suckers, Up For Grabs By The Next Charlatan Who Comes Along.

The Cosmos Is Within Us. We Are Made Of Star Stuff

We Are...capable Of Using Our Compassion And Our Intelligence, Our Technology And Our Wealth, To Make An Abundant And Meaningful Life For Every Inhabitant Of This Planet. To Enhance Enormously Our Understanding Of The Universe, And To Carry Us To The Stars.

The Universe Seems Neither Benign Nor Hostile, Merely Indifferent.

My Long-time View About Christianity Is That It Represents An Amalgam Of Two Seemingly Immiscible Parts-the Religion Of Jesus And The Religion Of Paul. Thomas Jefferson Attempted To Excise The Pauline Parts Of The New Testament. There Wasn't Much Left When He Was Done, But It Was An Inspiring Document.

Every Cell Is A Triumph Of Natural Selection, And We’re Made Of Trillions Of Cells. Within Us, Is A Little Universe.

Human History Can Be Viewed As A Slowly Dawning Awareness That We Are Members Of A Larger Group.

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.

We Are, Each Of Us, A Multitude. Within Us Is A Little Universe.

We Are The Product Of 4.5 Billion Years Of Fortuitous, Slow Biological Evolution. There Is No Reason To Think That The Evolutionary Process Has Stopped. Man Is A Transitional Animal. He Is Not The Climax Of Creation.

Absolute Certainty Will Always Elude Us. We Will Always Be Mired In Error. The Most Each Generation Can Hope For Is To Reduce The Error. . . .

What Does It Mean For A Civilisation To Be A Million Years Old? We Have Had Radio Telescopes And Spaceships For A Few Decades; Our Technical Civilisation Is A Few Hundred Years Old ... An Advanced Civilisation Millions Of Years Old Is As Much Beyond Us As We Are Beyond A Bushbaby Or A Macaque

If We Are To Survive, Our Loyalties Must Be Broadened Further, To Include The Whole Human Community, The Entire Planet Earth.

The Illegality Of Cannabis Is Outrageous, An Impediment To Full Utilization Of A Drug Which Helps Produce The Serenity And Insight, Sensitivity And Fellowship So Desperately Needed In This Increasingly Mad And Dangerous World.

Dangerous World

There Is In This Universe Much Of What Seems To Be Design.

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.

Science Is A Collaborative Enterprise, Spanning The Generations. When It Permits Us To See The Far Side Of Some New Horizon, We Remember Those Who Prepared The Way - Seeing For Them Also.

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.

The Neurochemistry Of The Brain Is Astonishingly Busy, The Circuitry Of A Machine More Wonderful Than Any Devised By Humans. But There Is No Evidence That Its Functioning Is Due To Anything More Than The 10(14) Neural Connections That Build An Elegant Architecture Of Consciousness.

In More Than One Respect, The Exploring Of The Solar System And Homesteading Other Worlds Constitutes The Beginning, Much More Than The End, Of History.

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?

I Think If We Ever Reach The Point Where We Think We Thoroughly Understand Who We Are And Where We Came From, We Will Have Failed.

One Of The Greatest Gifts Adults Can Give - To Their Offspring And To Their Society - Is To Read To Children.

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.

Except For Children (who Don't Know Enough Not To Ask The Important Questions), Few Of Us Spendtime Wondering Why Nature Is The Way It Is . . .

Science Is A Way To Not Fool Ourselves.

Extraordinary Observations Require Extraordinary Evidence To Make Them Believable.

All Inquires Carry With Them Some Element Of Risk. There Is No Guarantee That The Universe Will Conform To Our Predispositions.

Guarantees That

Preserve And Cherish The Pale Blue Dot, The Only Home We've Ever Known.

A Stars Rich In Europium; Of Distant Galaxies Analyzed Through The Collective Light Of A Hundred Billion Constituent Stars. Astronomical Spectroscopy Is An Almost Magical Technique. It Amazes Me Still. Auguste Comte Picked A Particularly Unfortunate Example.

The Suppression Of Uncomfortable Ideas May Be Common In Religion Or In Politics, But It Is Not The Path To Knowledge; It Has No In The Endeavor Of Science. We Do Not Know In Advance Who Will Discover Fundamental Insights.

What's The Harm Of A Little Mystification? It Sure Beats Boring Statistical Analyses.

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.

We Are The Universe Experiencing Itself.

But, Jefferson Worried That The People - And The Argument Goes Back To Thucydides And Aristotle - Are Easily Misled. He Also Stressed, Passionately And Repeatedly, That It Was Essential For The People To Understand The Risks And Benefits Of Government, To Educate Themselves, And To Involve Themselves In The Political Process. Without That, He Said, The Wolves Will Take Over.

Our Passion For Learning ... Is Our Tool For Survival.

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.

We Are A Way For The Cosmos To Know Itself.

We Are The Only Species On The Planet, So Far As We Know, To Have Invented A Communal Memory Stored Neither In Our Genes Nor In Our Brains. The Warehouse Of This Memory Is Called The Library

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?

Other Things Being Equal, It Is Better To Be Smart Than To Be Stupid.

Modern Darwinism Makes It Abundantly Clear That Many Less Ruthless Traits, Some Not Always Admired By Robber Barons And Fuhrers - Altruism, General Intelligence, Compassion - May Be The Key To Survival.

Avoidable Human Misery Is More Often Caused Not So Much By Stupidity As By Ignorance, Particularly Our Ignorance About Ourselves.

In College, In The Early 1950s, I Began To Learn A Little About How Science Works, The Secrets Of Its Great Success, How Rigorous The Standards Of Evidence Must Be If We Are Really To Know Something Is True, How Many False Starts And Dead Ends Have Plagued Human Thinking, How Our Biases Can Colour Our Interpretation Of Evidence, And How Often Belief Systems Widely Held And Supported By The Political, Religious And Academic Hierarchies Turn Out To Be Not Just Slightly In Error, But Grotesquely Wrong.

By Looking Far Out Into Space We Are Also Looking Far Back Into Time, Back Toward The Horizon Of The Universe, Back Toward The Epoch Of The Big Bang.

The Understanding Of The Intent Of The Artist Which I Can Achieve When High Sometimes Carries Over To When I’m Down. This Is One Of Many Human Frontiers Which Cannabis Has Helped Me Traverse.

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.

Nature Does Not Always Conform To Our Predispositions And Preferences, To What We Deem Comfortable And Easy To Understand.

We've Begun At Last To Wonder About Our Origins, Star Stuff Contemplating The Stars, Organized Collections Of Ten Billion Billion Billion Atoms Contemplating The Evolution Of Matter, Tracing That Long Path By Which It Arrived At Consciousness Here On The Planet Earth And Perhaps Throughout The Cosmos. Our Obligation To Survive And Flourish Is Owed Not Just To Ourselves But Also To That Cosmos, Ancient And Vast, From Which We Spring.

In All Our Searching, The Only Thing We've Found That Makes The Emptiness Bearable Is Each Other.

Some Racists Still Reject The Plain Testimony Written In The Dna That All The Races Are Not Only Human But Nearly Indistinguishable. . . .

Recent Research Shows That Many Children Without Enough To Eat Wind Up With Diminished Capacity To Understand And Learn (“cognitive Impairment” ). Children Don't Have To Be Starving For This To Happen. Even Mild Undernourishment — The Kind Most Common Among Poor People In America — Can Do It.

In The Way That Scepticism Is Sometimes Applied To Issues Of Public Concern, There Is A Tendency To Belittle, To Condescend, To Ignore The Fact That, Deluded Or Not, Supporters Of Superstition And Pseudoscience Are Human Beings With Real Feelings, Who, Like The Sceptics, Are Trying To Figure Out How The World Works And What Our Role In It Might Be. Their Motives Are In Many Cases Consonant With Science. If Their Culture Has Not Given Them All The Tools They Need To Pursue This Great Quest, Let Us Temper Our Criticism With Kindness. None Of Us Comes Fully Equipped.

When Permitted To Listen To Alternative Opinions And Engage In Substantive Debate, People Have Been Known To Change Their Minds. It Can Happen.

Scientists Make Mistakes. Accordingly, It Is The Job Of The Scientist To Recognize Our Weakness, To Examine The Widest Range Of Opinions, To Be Ruthlessly Self-critical. Science Is A Collective Enterprise With The Error-correction Machinery Often Running Smoothly.

Writing Is Perhaps The Greatest Of Human Inventions, Binding Together People Who Never Knew Each Other, Citizens Of Distant Epochs. Books Break The Shackles Of Time. A Book Is Proof That Humans Are Capable Of Magic.

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.

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.

Where We Have Strong Emotions, We're Liable To Fool Ourselves.

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?"

What Is Called For Is An Exquisite Balance Between Two Conflicting Needs: The Most Skeptical Scrutiny Of All Hypotheses That Are Served Up To Us And At The Same Time A Great Openness To New Ideas. If You Are Only Skeptical, Then No New Ideas Make It Through To You. On The Other Hand, If You Are Open To The Point Of Gullibility And Have Not An Ounce Of Skeptical Sense In You, Then You Cannot Distinguish Useful Ideas From The Worthless Ones.

Our Perceptions Are Fallible. We Sometimes See What Isn't There. We Are Prey To Optical Illusions. Occasionally We Hallucinate. We Are Error-prone.

Optical Illusions

Ours Is The First Generation That Has Grown Up With Science-fiction Ideas.

A Proclivity For Science Is Embedded Deeply Within Us, In All Times, Places, And Cultures. It Has Been The Means For Our Survival. It Is Our Birthright. When, Through Indifference, Inattention, Incompetence, Or Fear Of Skepticism, We Discourage Children From Science, We Are Disenfranchisin G Them, Taking From Them The Tools Needed To Manage Their Future.

The Illegality Of Cannabis Is Outrageous.

[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.

Philosophers And Scientists Confidently Offer Up Traits Said To Be Uniquely Human, And The Monkeys And Apes Casually Knock Them Down -- Toppling The Pretension That Humans Constitute Some Sort Of Biological Aristocracy Among The Beings On Earth.

What A Marvelous Cooperative Arrangement - Plants And Animals Each Inhaling Each Other's Exhalations, A Kind Of Planet-wide Mutual Mouth-to-stoma Resuscitation, The Entire Elegant Cycle Powered By A Star 150 Million Kilometers Away.

Time Spent With Children Is Time Well Spent. Their Little Minds Are Not Constrained By 'reality' Or Focused Upon Goals. Anything And Everything Is Possible. Imagination Will Often Carry Us To Worlds That Never Were. But Without It We Go Nowhere.

You Mean Am I For It Or Against It? You Think This Is A Key Question I'm Going To Be Asked On Vega, And You Want To Make Sure I Give The Right Answer? Okay. Overpopulation Is Why I'm In Favor Of Homosexuality And A Celibate Clergy. A Celibate Clergy Is An Especially Good Idea, Because It Tends To Suppress Any Hereditary Propensity Toward Fanaticism.

Religions Are Often State-protected Nurseries Of Pseudoscience, Although There's No Reason Why Religions Have To Play That Role. In A Way, It's An Artefact From Times Long Gone.

The Notion That Science And Spirituality Are Somehow Mutually Exclusive Does A Disservice To Both.

Real Patriots Ask Questions.

In A Lot Of Scientists, The Ratio Of Wonder To Skepticism Declines In Time. That May Be Connected With The Fact That In Some Fields-mathematics, Physics, Some Others-the Great Discoveries Are Almost Entirely Made By Youngsters.

The Universe Forces Those Who Live In It To Understand It. Those Creatures Who Find Everyday Experience A Muddled Jumble Of Events With No Predictability, No Regularity, Are In Grave Peril. The Universe Belongs To Those Who, At Least To Some Degree, Have Figured It Out.

Whatever The Reason You're On Mars, I'm Glad You're There, And I Wish I Was With You.

The Universe Forces Those Who Live In It To Understand It.

The Surface Of The Earth Is The Shore Of The Cosmic Ocean.

The Absence Of Evidence Is Not The Evidence Of Absence.

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.

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.

We Can Always Take But Never Give.

The Secrets Of Evolution Are Death And Time-the Deaths Of Enormous Numbers Of Lifeforms That Were Imperfectly Adapted To The Environment; And Time For A Long Succession Of Small Mutations.

I Am Not An Atheist. An Atheist Is Someone Who Has Compelling Evidence That There Is No Judeo-christian-islamic God. I Am Not That Wise, But Neither Do I Consider There To Be Anything Approaching Adequate Evidence For Such A God. Why Are You In Such A Hurry To Make Up Your Mind? Why Not Simply Wait Until There Is Compelling Evidence?

By Exploring Other Worlds We Safeguard This One. By Itself, I Think This Fact More Than Justifies The Money Our Species Has Spent In Sending Ships To Other Worlds. It Is Our Fate To Live During One Of The Most Perilous And, At The Same Time, One Of The Most Hopeful Chapters In Human History.

Better The Hard Truth, I Say, Than The Comforting Fantasy.

The Cannabis Experience Has Greatly Improved My Appreciation For Art, A Subject Which I Had Never Much Appreciated Before.

It's Perilous And Foolhardy For The Average Citizen To Remain Ignorant About Global Warming, Say, Or Ozone Depletion, Air Pollution, Toxic And Radioactive Wastes, Acid Rain, Topsoil Erosion, Tropical Deforestation, Exponential Population Growth. Jobs And Wages Depend On Science And Technology.

Who Are We, If Not Measured By Our Impact On Others? That’s Who We Are! We’re Not Who We Say We Are, We’re Not Who We Want To Be - We Are The Sum Of The Influence And Impact That We Have, In Our Lives, On Others.

The Total Number Of Stars In The Universe Is Larger Than All The Grains Of Sand On All The Beaches Of The Planet Earth.

Writing Is Perhaps The Greatest Of Human Inventions.

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.

Atoms Are Mainly Empty Space. Matter Is Composed Chiefly Of Nothing.

Cleverly Designed Experiments Are The Key.

Not Explaining Science Seems To Me Perverse. When You're In Love, You Want To Tell The World.

The Earth Is The Only World Known So Far To Harbor Life. There Is Nowhere Else, At Least In The Near Future, To Which Our Species Could Migrate. Visit, Yes. Settle, Not Yet. Like It Or Not, For The Moment The Earth Is Where We Make Our Stand. It Has Been Said That Astronomy Is A Humbling And Character-building Experience..... To Me, It Underscores Our Responsibility To Deal More Kindly With One Another, And To Preserve And Cherish The Pale Blue Dot, The Only Home We've Ever Known.

All Colours Are Arbitrary.

Ask Courageous Questions. Do Not Be Satisfied With Superficial Answers.

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.

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.

Our Concern For The Future Can Be Tested By How Well We Support Our Libraries.

There Is A Report That Says That Kids Who Watch Violent Tv Programs Tend To Be More Violent When They Grow Up. But Did The Tv Cause The Violence, Or Do Violent Children Preferentially Enjoy Watching Violent Programs?

In Our Time, We Have Sifted The Sands Of Mars, We Have Established A Presence There, We Have Fulfilled A Century Of Dreams!

Your Religion Assumes That People Are Children And Need A Boogeyman So They'll Behave. You Want People To Believe In God So They'll Obey The Law. That's The Only Means That Occurs To You: A Strict Secular Police Force, And The Threat Of Punishment By An All-seeing God For Whatever The Police Overlook. You Sell Human Beings Short.

We Humans Appear On The Cosmic Calendar So Recently That Our Recorded History Occupies Only The Last Few Seconds Of The Last Minute Of December 31st.

We Live On A Mote Of Dust Suspended In A Sunbeam

Every Time You Look Up At The Sky, Every One Of Those Points Of Light Is A Reminder That Fusion Power Is Extractable From Hydrogen And Other Light Elements, And It Is An Everyday Reality Throughout The Milky Way Galaxy.

It Will Not Be We Who Reach Alpha Centauri, And The Other Nearby Stars. It Will Be A Species Very Like Us - But With More Of Our Strengths And Fewer Of Our Weaknesses.

There Are Wonders Enough Out There Without Our Inventing Any.

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.

Except In Pure Mathematics, Nothing Is Known For Certain (although Much Is Certainly False).

The Vast Distances That Separate The Stars Are Providential. Beings And Worlds Are Quarantined From One Another. The Quarantine Is Lifted Only For Those With Sufficient Self-knowledge And Judgment To Have Safely Traveled From Star To Star.

Somewhere, Something Incredible Is Waiting To Be Known.

Is It Fair To Be Suspicious Of An Entire Profession Because Of A Few Bad Apples? There Are At Least Two Important Differences, It Seems To Me. First, No One Doubts That Science Actually Works, Whatever Mistaken And Fraudulent Claim May From Time To Time Be Offered. But Whether There Are Any Miraculous Cures From Faith-healing, Beyond The Body's Own Ability To Cure Itself, Is Very Much At Issue. Secondly, The Expose' Of Fraud And Error In Science Is Made Almost Exclusively By Science. But The Exposure Of Fraud And Error In Faith-healing Is Almost Never Done By Other Faith-healers.

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?

I Don?t Feel Rejected By The Sky. I?m A Part Of It- Tiny, To Be Sure, But Everything Is Tiny Compared To That Overwhelming Immensity.

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.

Chlorine Is A Deadly Poison Gas Employed On European Battlefields In World War I. Sodium Is A Corrosive Metal Which Burns Upon Contact With Water. Together They Make A Placid And Unpoisonous Material, Table Salt. Why Each Of These Substances Has The Properties It Does Is A Subject Called Chemistry.

When We Look Up At Night And View The Stars, Everything We See Is Shinning Because Of Distant Nuclear Fusion.

The Suppression Of Uncomfortable Ideas May Be Common In Religion Or In Politics, But It Is Not The Path To Knowledge, And There's No Place For It In The Endeavor Of Science. We Do Not Know Beforehand Where Fundamental Insights Will Arise From About Our Mysterious And Lovely Solar System. The History Of Our Study Of Our Solar System Shows Us Clearly That Accepted And Conventional Ideas Are Often Wrong, And That Fundamental Insights Can Arise From The Most Unexpected Sources.

The Brain Is Like A Muscle. When It Is In Use We Feel Very Good. Understanding Is Joyous.

We Have Entered, Almost Without Noticing, An Age Of Exploration And Discovery Unparalleled Since The Renaissance.

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.

The Price We Pay For Anticipation Of The Future Is Anxiety About It

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

The Candle Flame Gutters. Its Little Pool Of Light Trembles. Darkness Gathers. The Demons Begin To Stir.

I Have A Foreboding Of An America In My Children's Or Grandchildren's Time - [...] When Awesome Technological Powers Are In The Hands Of A Very Few, And No One Representing The Public Interest Can Even Grasp The Issues; When The People Have Lost The Ability To Set Their Own Agendas Or Knowledgeably Question Those In Authority; When, Clutching Our Crystals And Nervously Consulting Our Horoscopes, Our Critical Faculties In Decline, Unable To Distinguish Between What Feels Good And What’s True, We Slide, Almost Without Noticing, Back Into Superstition And Darkness.

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