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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.

-Carl Sagan

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Probably A Dozen Times

Carl Sagan

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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.

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Our Species Needs, And Deserves, A Citizenry With Minds Wide Awake And A Basic Understanding Of How The World Works.

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.

The Hindu Religion Is The Only 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.

We Can't Help It. Life Looks For Life.

The Near Side Of A Galaxy Is Tens Of Thousands Of Light-years Closer To Us Than The Far Side; Thus We See The Front As It Was Tens Of Thousands Of Years Before The Back. But Typical Events In Galactic Dynamics Occupy Tens Of Millions Of Years, So The Error In Thinking Of An Image Of A Galaxy As Frozen In One Moment Of Time Is Small.

The Open Road Still Softly Calls.

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.

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.

In A Complex Universe, In A Society Undergoing Unprecedented Change, How Can We Find The Truth If We Are Not Willing To Question Everything And To Give A Fair Hearing To Everything?

An Atheist Has To Know A Lot More Than I Know. An Atheist Is Someone Who Knows There Is No God. By Some Definitions Atheism Is Very Stupid.

There Is No God

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

The Simplest Thought, Like The Concept Of The Number One, Has An Elaborate Logical Underpinning.

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.

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

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

War Is Murder Writ Large.

Skeptical Scrutiny Is The Means, In Both Science And Religion, By Which Deep Thoughts Can Be Winnowed From Deep Nonsense.

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.

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.

Both The Freudian And The Platonic Metaphors Emphasize The Considerable Independence Of And Tension Among The Constituent Parts Of The Psyche, A Point That Characterizes The Human Condition.

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 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.

If The Greenhouse Effect Is A Blanket In Which We Wrap Ourselves To Keep Warm, Nuclear Winter Kicks The Blanket Off.

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.

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.

We Can Judge Our Progress By The Courage Of Our Questions And The Depth Of Our Answers, Our Willingness To Embrace What Is True Rather Than What Feels Good.

I Would Love To Believe That When I Die I Will Live Again, That Some Thinking, Feeling, Remembering Part Of Me Will Continue.

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

Science Is An Attempt, Largely Successful, To Understand The World, To Get A Grip On Things, To Get Hold Of Ourselves, To Steer A Safe Course. Microbiology And Meteorology Now Explain What Only A Few Centuries Ago Was Considered Sufficient Cause To Burn Women To Death.

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

Your God Is Too Small For My Universe.

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.

One Of The Great Commandments Of Science Is: 'mistrust Arguments From Authority.'

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

How Is It That Hardly Any Major Religion Has Looked At Science And Concluded, “this Is Better Than We Thought! The Universe Is Much Bigger Than Our Prophets Said, Grander, More Subtle, More Elegant?” Instead They Say, “no, No, No! My God Is A Little God, And I Want Him To Stay That Way.” A Religion, Old Or New, That Stressed The Magnificence Of The Universe As Revealed By Modern Science Might Be Able To Draw Forth Reserves Of Reverence And Awe Hardly Tapped By The Conventional Faiths.

Virtually Every Major Technological Advance In The History Of The Human Species - Back To The Invention Of Stone Tools And The Domestication Of Fire - Has Been Ethically Ambiguous.

Science Is A Way Of Thinking That Helps You Not To Fool Yourself.

There Are Wonders Enough Out There Without Our Inventing Any.

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

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.

Billions And Billions.

The Fossil Record Implies Trial And Error, An Inability To Anticipate The Future, Features Inconsistent With An Efficient Great Designer (although Not With A Designer Of A More Remote And Indirect Temperament)

Trial And Error

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.

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

A Millennium Before Europeans Were Willing To Divest Themselves Of The Biblical Idea That The World Was A Few Thousand Years Old, The Mayans Were Thinking Of Millions And The Hindus Billions.

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.

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

A Galaxy Is Composed Of Gas And Dust And Stars - Billions Upon Billions Of Stars. Every Star May Be A Sun To Someone.

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?

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

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

We Go About Our Daily Lives Understanding Almost Nothing Of The World.

All Civilizations Become Either Spacefaring Or Extinct.

Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence

My Wonder Button Is Being Pushed All The Time.

As The Ancient Myth Makers Knew, We Are Children Equally Of The Earth And The Sky.

These Days There Seems To Be Nowhere Left To Explore, At Least On The Land Area Of The Earth. Victims Of Their Very Success, The Explorers Now Pretty Much Stay Home.

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.

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

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

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.

For Myself, I Like A Universe That, Includes Much That Is Unknown And, At The Same Time, Much That Is Knowable. A Universe In Which Everything Is Known Would Be Static And Dull, As Boring As The Heaven Of Some Weak-minded Theologians. A Universe That Is Unknowable Is No Fit Place For A Thinking Being. The Ideal Universe For Us Is One Very Much Like The Universe We Inhabit. And I Would Guess That This Is Not Really Much Of A Coincidence.

Thus The Recent Rapid Evolution Of Human Intelligence Is Not Only The Cause Of But Also The Only Conceivable Solution To The Many Serious Problems That Beset Us.

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 Are An Intelligent Species And The Use Of Our Intelligence Quite Properly Gives Us Pleasure. In This Respect The Brain Is Like A Muscle. When We Think Well, We Feel Good. Understanding Is A Kind Of Ecstasy.

It Goes With A Courageous Intent To Greet The Universe As It Really Is, Not To Foist Our Emotional Predispositions On It But To Courageously Accept What Our Explorations Tell Us.

Writing A Novel Is Like Trying To Solve A Very Long Mathematical Equation. Changing Anything Can Change Everything Else.

Mathematical Equations

The Old Appeals To Racial, Sexual And Religious Chauvinism To Rabid Nationalist Fervor, Are Beginning Not To Work.

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?

Understanding Is A Kind Of Ecstasy

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?

Scientists Constantly Get Clobbered With The Idea That We Spent 27 Billion Dollars On The Apollo Programs, And Are Asked "what More Do You Want?" We Didn't Spend It; It Was Done For Political Reasons. ... Apollo Was A Response To The Bay Of Pigs Fiasco And To The Successful Orbital Flight Of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's Objective Was Not To Find Out The Origin Of The Moon By The End Of The Decade; Rather It Was To Put A Man On The Moon And Bring Him Back, And We Did That.

A Googolplex Is Precisely As Far From Infinity As Is The Number 1... No Matter What Number You Have In Mind, Infinity Is Larger Still.

The Very Act Of Understanding Is A Celebration Of Joining, Merging, Even If On A Very Modest Scale, With The Magnificence Of The Cosmos.

Books Permit Us To Voyage Through Time, To Tap The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors.

The Nitrogen In Our Dna, The Calcium In Our Teeth, The Iron In Our Blood, The Carbon In Our Apple Pies Were Made In The Interiors Of Collapsing Stars. We Are Made Of Starstuff.

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.

Cutting Off Fundamental, Curiosity-driven Science Is Like Eating The Seed Corn. We May Have A Little More To Eat Next Winter But What Will We Plant So We And Our Children Will Have Enough To Get Through The Winters To Come?

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

And You Are Made Of A Hundred Trillion Cells. We Are, Each Of Us, A Multitude.

In The Long Run, The Aggressive Civilizations Destroy Themselves, Almost Always. It's Their Nature. They Can't Help It.

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.

Scientific Method

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?"

Valid Criticism Does You A Favor.

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

You Are Worth About 3 Dollars Worth In Chemicals.

We Wish To Find The Truth, No Matter Where It Lies. But To Find The Truth We Need Imagination And Skepticism Both. We Will Not Be Afraid To Speculate, But We Will Be Careful To Distinguish Speculation From Fact.

If We Say That God Has Always Been, Why Not Save A Step And Conclude That The Universe Has Always Been?

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.

If You Want To Make A [rhubarb] Pie From Scratch, First You Have To Create The Universe.

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

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 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.

Cleverly Designed Experiments Are The Key.

Extinction Is The Rule. Survival Is The Exception.

Mass Extinction

Exception To The Rule

I Am Often Amazed At How Much More Capability And Enthusiasm For Science There Is Among Elementary School Youngsters Than Among College Students.

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.

The Lifetime Of A Human Being Is Measured By Decades, The Lifetime Of The Sun Is A Hundred Million Times Longer. Compared To A Star, We Are Like Mayflies, Fleeting Ephemeral Creatures Who Live Out Their Lives In The Course Of A Single Day.

We Live On A Mote Of Dust Suspended In A Sunbeam

To Read Is To Voyage Through Time.

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

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.

Our Intelligence Is Imperfect, Surely, And Newly Arisen; The Ease With Which It Can Be Sweet-talked, Overwhelmed, Or Subverted By Other Hardwired Propensities - Sometimes Themselves Disguised As The Cool Light Of Reason - Is Worrisome.

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.

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.

I Would Suggest That Science Is, At Least In My Part, Informed Worship.

Science Is Not Perfect. It's Often Misused; It's Only A Tool, But It's The Best Tool We Have. Self-correcting , Ever Changing, Applicable To Everything: With This Tool, We Vanquish The Impossible.

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

All Of Us Cherish Our Beliefs. They Are, To A Degree, Self-defining. When Someone Comes Along Who Challenges Our Belief System As Insufficiently Well-based - Or Who, Like Socrates, Merely Asks Embarrassing Questions That We Haven't Thought Of, Or Demonstrates That We've Swept Key Underlying Assumptions Under The Rug - It Becomes Much More Than A Search For Knowledge. It Feels Like A Personal Assault.

Embarrassing Questions

The Universe Is Not Required To Be In Perfect Harmony With Human Ambition.

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.

Self Questioning

For Years I've Been Stressing With Regard To Ufos That Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.

These Are All Cases Of Proved Or Presumptive Baloney. A Deception Arises, Sometimes Innocently But Collaboratively, Sometimes With Cynical Premeditation. Usually The Victim Is Caught Up In A Powerful Emotion -- Wonder, Fear, Greed, Grief. Credulous Acceptance Of Baloney Can Cost You Money; That's What P. T. Barnum Meant When He Said, 'there's A Sucker Born Every Minute.' But It Can Be Much More Dangerous Than That, And When Governments And Societies Lose The Capacity For Critical Thinking, The Results Can Be Catastrophic -- However Sympathetic We May Be To Those Who Have Bought The Baloney.

Otherwise We Don't Run The Government The Government Runs Us

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.

We Are A Way Of The Universe Knowing Itself.

Our Ancestors Lived Out Of Doors. They Were As Familiar With The Night Sky As Most Of Us Are With Our Favorite Television Programs.

The Words "question" And "quest" Are Cognates. Only Through Inquiry Can We Discover Truth.

How Is It That Hardly Any Major Religion Has Looked At Science And Concluded, “this Is Better Than We Thought! The Universe Is Much Bigger Than Our Prophets Said, Grander, More Subtle, More Elegant?

You Can Get Into A Habit Of Thought In Which You Enjoy Making Fun Of All Those Other People Who Don't See Things As Clearly As You Do. We Have To Guard Carefully Against It.

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.

We Are All Made Up Of Star Stuff.

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.

The Passion To Explore Is At The Heart Of Being Human.

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.

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

I Don't Want To Believe. I Want To Know.

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.

The Earth Is A Very Small Stage In A Vast Cosmic Arena.

The Sky Calls To Us. If We Do Not Destroy Ourselves, We Will One Day Venture To The Stars.

The Universe Is A Pretty Big Place. If It's Just Us, Seems Like An Awful Waste Of Space.

It Is Far Better To Grasp The Universe As It Really Is Than To Persist In Delusion, However Satisfying And Reassuring.

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.

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

We Are Made Of Starstuff.

I Believe That The Extraordinary Should Be Pursued. But Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.

Our Loyalties Are To The Species And The Planet. We Speak For Earth.

It Is All A Matter Of Time Scale. An Event That Would Be Unthinkable In A Hundred Years May Be Inevitable In A Hundred Million.

Science Is A Way Of Thinking Much More Than It Is A Body Of Knowledge. Its Goal Is To Find Out How The World Works, To Seek What Regularities There May Be, To Penetrate To The Connections Of Things-from Subatomic Particles, Which May Be The Constituents Of All Matter, To Living Organisms, The Human Social Community, And Thence To The Cosmos As A Whole.

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.

People Are Not Stupid. They Believe Things For Reasons. The Last Way For Skeptics To Get The Attention Of Bright, Curious, Intelligent People Is To Belittle Or Condescend Or To Show Arrogance Toward Their Beliefs.

We Are Prodding, Challenging, Seeking Contradictions Or Small, Persistent Residual Errors, Proposing Alternative Explanations, Encouraging Heresy. We Give Our Highest Rewards To Those Who Convincingly Disprove Established Beliefs.

Because Men, Compared To Male Chimps, Have Such Relatively Small Testicles (large Testicles Indicate A Species Where Many Males Mate, One After The Other, With The Same Female), We Might Guess That Promiscuous Societies Were Uncommon In The Immediate Human Past.

[one's] Inability To Invalidate Your Hypothesis Is Not At All The Same Thing As Proving It True.

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

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 Is The Tension Between Creativity And Skepticism That Has Produced The Stunning And Unexpected Findings Of Science.

[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.

It Is Sometimes Said That Scientists Are Unromantic, That Their Passion To Figure Out Robs The World Of Beauty And Mystery. But Is It Not Stirring To Understand How The World Actually Works — That White Light Is Made Of Colors, That Color Is The Way We Perceive The Wavelengths Of Light, That Transparent Air Reflects Light, That In So Doing It Discriminates Among The Waves, And That The Sky Is Blue For The Same Reason That The Sunset Is Red? It Does No Harm To The Romance Of The Sunset To Know A Little Bit About It.

It Would Be Wryly Interesting If In Human History The Cultivation Of Marijuana Led Generally To The Invention Of Agriculture, And Thereby To Civilization.

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

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

We Are Made Of Stellar Ash. Our Origin And Evolution Have Been Tied To Distant Cosmic Events. The Exploration Of The Cosmos Is A Voyage Of Self-discovery.

Much Of Human History Can, I Think, Be Described As A Gradual And Sometimes Painful Liberation From Provincialism, The Emerging Awareness That There Is More To The World Than Was Generally Believed By Our Ancestors.

Imagine A Room Awash In Gasoline, And There Are Two Implacable Enemies In That Room. One Of Them Has Nine Thousand Matches. The Other Has Seven Thousand Matches. Each Of Them Is Concerned About Who's Ahead, Who's Stronger. Well That's The Kind Of Situation We Are Actually In. The Amount Of Weapons That Are Available To The United States And The Soviet Union Are So Bloated, So Grossly In Excess Of What's Needed To Dissuade The Other, That If It Weren't So Tragic, It Would Be Laughable. What Is Necessary Is To Reduce The Matches And To Clean Up The Gasoline.

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

Every Thinking Person Fears Nuclear War, And Every Technological State Plans For It. Everyone Knows It Is Madness, And Every Nation Has An Excuse

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.

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.

The Usual Rejoinder To Someone Who Says 'they Laughed At Columbus, They Laughed At Galileo' Is To Say 'but They Also Laughed At Bozo The Clown'.

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.

Many Statements About God Are Confidently Made By Theologians On Grounds That Today At Least Sound Specious. Thomas Aquinas Claimed To Prove That God Cannot Make Another God, Or Commit Suicide, Or Make A Man Without A Soul, Or Even Make A Triangle Whose Interior Angles Do Not Equal 180 Degrees. But Bolyai And Lobachevsky Were Able To Accomplish This Last Feat (on A Curved Surface) In The Nineteenth Century, And They Were Not Even Approximately Gods.

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

My View Is That If There Is No Evidence For It, Then Forget About It. An Agnostic Is Somebody Who Doesn’t Believe In Something Until There Is Evidence For It, So I’m Agnostic.

We Have Also Arranged Things So That Almost No One Understands Science And Technology. This Is A Prescription For Disaster. We Might Get Away With It For A While, But Sooner Or Later This Combustible Mixture Of Ignorance And Power Is Going To Blow Up In Our Faces.

We Are One Species. We Are Starstuff.

Real Patriots Ask Questions.

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.

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.

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?

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

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. They Avoid Rather Than Confront The World. But Those With The Courage To Explore The Weave And Structure Of The Cosmos, Even Where It Differs Profoundly From Their Wishes And Prejudices, Will Penetrate Its Deepest Mysteries.

The Bill Of Rights Decoupled Religion From The State, In Part Because So Many Religions Were Steeped In An Absolutist Frame Of Mind - Each Convinced That It Alone Had A Monopoly On The Truth And Therefore Eager For The State To Impose This Truth On Others.

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.

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.

For A Long Time The Human Instinct To Understand Was Thwarted By Facile Religious Explanations.

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

There Are As Many Atoms In One Molecule Of Dna As There Are Stars In A Typical Galaxy.

Accommodation To Change, The Thoughtful Pursuit Of Alternative Futures Are Keys To The Survival Of Civilization And Perhaps Of The Human Species.

We Are At A Crossroads In Human History. Never Before Has There Been A Moment So Simultaneously Perilous And Promising. We Are The First Species To Have Taken Evolution Into Our Own Hands.

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.

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.

The Sacred Truth Of Science Is That There Are No Sacred Truths.

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.

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

My Fundamental Premise About The Brain Is That Its Workings - What We Sometimes Call "mind" - Are A Consequence Of Its Anatomy And Physiology, And Nothing More.

Anatomy And Physiology

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.

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.

Democracies Have

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.

The Surface Of The Earth Is The Shore Of The Cosmic Ocean. On This Shore, We've Learned Most Of What We Know. Recently, We've Waded A Little Way Out, Maybe Ankle-deep, And The Water Seems Inviting. Some Part Of Our Being Knows This Is Where We Came From. We Long To Return, And We Can, Because The Cosmos Is Also Within Us. We're Made Of Star Stuff. We Are A Way For The Cosmos To Know Itself.

A Book Is Proof That Humans Are Capable Of Working Magic.

Extraordinary Observations Require Extraordinary Evidence To Make Them Believable.

For All Our Failings, Despite Our Limitations And Fallibilities, We Humans Are Capable Of Greatness.

Somewhere, Something Incredible Is Waiting To Be Known.

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.

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

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.

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.

At The Heart Of Science Is An Essential Balance Between Two Seemingly Contradictory Attitudes-an Openness To New Ideas, No Matter How Bizarre Or Counterintuitive They May Be, And The Most Ruthless Skeptical Scrutiny Of All Ideas, Old And New. This Is How Deep Truths Are Winnowed From Deep Nonsense.

An Atheist Is Someone Who Is Certain That God Does Not Exist, Someone Who Has Compelling Evidence Against The Existence Of God. I Know Of No Such Compelling Evidence. Because God Can Be Relegated To Remote Times And Places And To Ultimate Causes, We Would Have To Know A Great Deal More About The Universe Than We Do Now To Be Sure That No Such God Exists. To Be Certain Of The Existence Of God And To Be Certain Of The Nonexistence Of God Seem To Me To Be The Confident Extremes In A Subject So Riddled With Doubt And Uncertainty As To Inspire Very Little Confidence Indeed.

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