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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.

-Carl Sagan

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Teller Contended, Not Implausibly,

Carl Sagan

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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.

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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.

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

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

We Are The Custodians Of Life's Meaning.

Every Star May Be A Sun To Someone.

It's Hard To Kill A Creature Once It Lets You See Its Consciousness.

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?

We Began As Wanderers, And We Are Wanderers Still.

If We Are Merely Matter Intricately Assembled, Is This Really Demeaning? If There's Nothing Here But Atoms, Does That Make Us Less Or Does That Make Matter More?

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

We Humans Look Rather Different From A Tree. Without A Doubt We Perceive The World Differently Than A Tree Does. But Down Deep, At The Molecular Heart Of Life, The Trees And We Are Essentially Identical.

If I Finish A Book A Week, I Will Read Only A Few Thousand Books In My Lifetime, About A Tenth Of A Percent Of The Contents Of The Greatest Libraries Of Our Time. The Trick Is To Know Which Books To Read.

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

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.

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

But The Fact That Some Geniuses Were Laughed At Does Not Imply That All Who Are Laughed At Are Geniuses. They Laughed At Columbus, They Laughed At Fulton, They Laughed At The Wright Brothers. But They Also Laughed At Bozo The Clown.

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

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.

Real Patriots Ask Questions.

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

Each Of Us Is A Tiny Being, Permitted To Ride On The Outermost Skin Of One Of The Smaller Planets For A Few Dozen Trips Around The Local Star.

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.

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.

What An Astonishing Thing A Book Is. It’s A Flat Object Made From A Tree With Flexible Parts On Which Are Imprinted Lots Of Funny Dark Squiggles. But One Glance At It And You’re Inside The Mind Of Another Person, Maybe Somebody Dead For Thousands Of Years. ... Books Break The Shackles Of Time. A Book Is Proof That Humans Are Capable Of Working Magic.

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.

Science Is A Way To Call The Bluff Of Those Who Only Pretend To Knowledge. It Is A Bulwark Against Mysticism, Against Superstition, Against Religion Misapplied To Where It Has No Business Being.

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.

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.

Any Faith That Admires Truth, That Strives To Know God, Must Be Brave Enough To Accommodate The Universe.

[kepler] Preferred The Hard Truth To His Dearest Illusions, And That Is The Heart Of Science.

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

I Find Science So Much More Fascinating Than Science Fiction. It Also Has The Advantage Of Being True.

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.

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.

All Colours Are Arbitrary.

We Have Begun To Contemplate Our Origins: Starstuff Pondering The Stars; Organized Assemblages Of Ten Billion Billion Billion Atoms Considering The Evolution Of Atoms; Tracing The Long Journey By Which, Here At Least, Consciousness Arose.

We've Tended In Our Cosmologies To Make Things Familiar. Despite All Our Best Efforts, We've Not Been Very Inventive. In The West, Heaven Is Placid And Fluffy, And Hell Is Like The Inside Of A Volcano. In Many Stories, Both Realms Are Governed By Dominance Hierarchies Headed By Gods Or Devils. Monotheists Talked About The King Of Kings. In Every Culture We Imagined Something Like Our Own Political System Running The Universe. Few Found The Similarity Suspicious.

I Don't Know The Answer. Maybe No One Knows. Maybe When You Grow Up, You'll Be The First To Find Out.

[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.

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

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But I Could Be Wrong.

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

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

A Blade Of Grass Is A Commonplace On Earth; It Would Be A Miracle On Mars. Our Descendants On Mars Will Know The Value Of A Patch Of Green. And If A Blade Of Grass Is Priceless, What Is The Value Of A Human Being?

I'm Only A Four-dimensional Creature. Haven't Got A Clue How To Visualise Infinity. Even Einstein Hadn't. I Know Because I Asked Him

A Single Message From Space Will Show That It Is Possible To Live Through Technological Adolescence. . . . It Is Possible That The Future Of Human Civilization Depends On The Receipt Of Interstellar Messages.

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

Not All Birds Can Fly. What Separates The Flyers From The Walkers Is The Ability To Take Off.

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.

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You Are Worth About 3 Dollars Worth In Chemicals.

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

We Live On A Mote Of Dust Suspended In A Sunbeam

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The Absence Of Evidence Is Not The Evidence Of Absence.

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.

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

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

Human Beings Have A Demonstrated Talent For Self-deception When Their Emotions Are Stirred.

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

All Inquiries Carry With Them Some Element Of Risk.

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The Visions We Offer Our Children Shape The Future. It _matters_ What Those Visions Are. Often They Become Self-fulfilling Prophecies. Dreams Are Maps.

Present Global Culture Is A Kind Of Arrogant Newcomer. It Arrives On The Planetary Stage Following Four And A Half Billion Years Of Other Acts, And After Looking About For A Few Thousand Years Declares Itself In Possession Of Eternal Truths. But In A World That Is Changing As Fast As Ours, This Is A Prescription For Disaster. No Nation, No Religion, No Economic System, No Body Of Knowledge, Is Likely To Have All The Answers For Our Survival. There Must Be Many Social Systems That Would Work Far Better Than Any Now In Existence. In The Scientific Tradition, Our Task Is To Find Them.

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.

Maxwell's Equations Have Had A Greater Impact On Human History Than Any Ten Presidents.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Humans - Who Enslave, Castrate, Experiment On, And Fillet Other Animals - Have Had An Understandable Penchant For Pretending Animals Do Not Feel Pain.

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

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.

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.

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

If You Wish To Make An Apple Pie From Scratch, You Must First Invent The Universe.

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.

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. Sooner Or Later Such A Religion Will Emerge.

Man Is The Matter Of The Cosmos, Contemplating Itself.

If The Press Descended, The Science Would Surely Suffer.

You Could Just As Well Say That An Agnostic Is A Deeply Religious Person With At Least A Rudimentary Knowledge Of Human Fallibility.

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.

Nothing Disturbs Me More Than The Glorification Of Stupidity.

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

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.

Perhaps, In Retrospect, There Would Be Little Motivation Even For Malevolent Extraterrestrials To Attack The Earth; Perhaps, After A Preliminary Survey, They Might Decide It Is More Expedient Just To Be Patient For A Little While And Wait For Us To Self-destruct.

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

We Live In A Vast And Awesome Universe In Which, Daily, Suns Are Made And Worlds Destroyed, Where Humanity Clings To An Obscure Clod Of Rock.

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.

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.

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 Well-meaning Contention That All Ideas Have Equal Merit Seems To Me Little Different From The Disastrous Contention That No Ideas Have Any Merit.

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

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.

There Are Many Instances In Science, Where Those Closest To The Intricacies Of The Subject Have A More Highly Developed Sense Of Its Intractability Than Those At Some Remove. On The Other Hand, Those At Too Great A Distance May, I Am Well Aware, Mistake Ignorance For Perspective.

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.

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.

Extraordinary Claim Requires Extraordinary Proof.

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.

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?

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.

I Worry That, Especially As The Millennium Edges Nearer, Pseudo-science And Superstition Will Seem Year By Year More Tempting, The Siren Song Of Unreason More Sonorous And Attractive.

The Illegality Of Cannabis Is Outrageous.

The Uniqueness Of Humans Has Been Claimed On Many Grounds, But Most Often Because Of Our Tool-making, Culture, Language, Reason And Morality. We Have Them, The Other Animals Don't, And -- So The Argument Goes -- That's That.

Looking At Fires When High, By The Way, Especially Through One Of Those Prism Kaleidoscopes Which Image Their Surroundings, Is An Extraordinarily Moving And Beautiful Experience.

Don't Judge Everyone Else By Your Own Limited Experience.

We Are Like Butterflies Who Flutter For A Day And Think It Is Forever.

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.

I Believe That In Every Person Is A Kind Of Circuit Which Resonates To Intellectual Discovery-and The Idea Is To Make That Resonance Work

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.

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

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.

With Insufficient Data It Is Easy To Go Wrong.

Not All Bits Have Equal Value.

Science And Technology

It Took The Church Until 1832 To Remove Galileo 's Work From Its List Of Books Which Catholics Were Forbidden To Read At The Risk Of Dire Punishment Of Their Immortal Souls.

She Had Studied The Universe All Her Life, But Had Overlooked Its Clearest Message: For Small Creatures Such As We The Vastness Is Bearable Only Through Love.

Small Creatures

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.

We Are The First Species To Have Taken Our Evolution Into Our Own Hands.

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

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.

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.

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.

What An Astonishing Thing A Book Is.

We Are Made Of Starstuff.

Has There Ever Been A Religion With The Prophetic Accuracy And Reliability Of Science? . . . No Other Human Institution Comes Close.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Exploration Is In Our Nature. We Began As Wanderers, And We Are Wanderers Still. We Have Lingered Long Enough On The Shores Of The Cosmic Ocean. We Are Ready At Last To Set Sail For The Stars.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Celibate Clergy Is An Especially Good Idea, Because It Tends To Suppress Any Hereditary Propensity Toward Fanaticism.

The Reappearance Of The Crescent Moon After The New Moon; The Return Of The Sun After A Total Eclipse, The Rising Of The Sun In The Morning After Its Troublesome Absence At Night Were Noted By People Around The World; These Phenomena Spoke To Our Ancestors Of The Possibility Of Surviving Death. Up There In The Skies Was Also A Metaphor Of Immortality.

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.

Every One Of Us Is, In The Cosmic Perspective, Precious. If A Human Disagrees With You, Let Him Live. In A Hundred Billion Galaxies, You Will Not Find Another.

We Are Star Stuff Harvesting Sunlight.

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.

The Beauty Of A Living Thing Is Not The Atoms That Go Into It, But The Way Those Atoms Are Put Together.

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.

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

War Is Murder Writ Large.

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

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

The Prediction Of Nuclear Winter Is Drawn Not, Of Course, From Any Direct Experience With The Consequences Of Global Nuclear War, But Rather From An Investigation Of The Governing Physics.

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.

Writing Is Perhaps The Greatest Of Human Inventions.

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

Guarantees That

The Chief Deficiency I See In The Skeptical Movement Is Its Polarization: Us Vs. Them - The Sense That We Have A Monopoly On The Truth; That Those Other People Who Believe In All These Stupid Doctrines Are Morons; That If You're Sensible, You'll Listen To Us; And If Not, To Hell With You. This Is Nonconstructive. It Does Not Get Our Message Across. It Condemns Us To Permanent Minority Status.

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.

Cosmos Is A Greek Word For The Order Of The Universe. It Is, In A Way, The Opposite Of Chaos. It Implies The Deep Interconnectedness Of All Things. It Conveys Awe For The Intricate And Subtle Way In Which The Universe Is Put Together.

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.

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.

But Down Deep, At The Molecular Heart Of Life We're Essentially Identical To Trees.

At The Extremes It Is Difficult To Distinguish Pseudoscience From Rigid, Doctrinaire Religion.

Stars Are Phoenixes, Rising From Their Own Ashes.

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.

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?

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.

There Are More Potential Combinations Of Dna [physical Forms] Than There Are Atoms In The Universe.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

'in His Celebrated Book, 'on Liberty', The English Philosopher John Stuart Mill Argued That Silencing An Opinion Is "a Peculiar Evil." If The Opinion Is Right, We Are Robbed Of The "opportunity Of Exchanging Error For Truth"; And If It's Wrong, We Are Deprived Of A Deeper Understanding Of The Truth In Its "collision With Error." If We Know Only Our Own Side Of The Argument, We Hardly Know Even That: It Becomes Stale, Soon Learned By Rote, Untested, A Pallid And Lifeless Truth.'

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.

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.

Science Is A Way To Not Fool Ourselves.

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

The Cosmos Is All There Is, All There Ever Was, And All There Ever Will Be.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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