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. Carl Sagan More Quotes by Carl Sagan More Quotes From Carl Sagan Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. Carl Sagan pseudoscience would-be doe Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse Carl Sagan nuclear war thinking If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go Carl Sagan ruins ifs earth 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. Carl Sagan sunset moon morning 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? Carl Sagan willing hearing giving 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. Carl Sagan mind teacher book 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. Carl Sagan some-things-are-meant-to-be keeping-secrets known 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. Carl Sagan goal science thinking Ours is the first generation that has grown up with science-fiction ideas. Carl Sagan generations fiction ideas You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. Carl Sagan nightmare dream beautiful Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. Carl Sagan understanding keys book We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star. Carl Sagan atoms space stars 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. Carl Sagan cosmos prejudice wish Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence to make them believable. Carl Sagan extraordinary observation evidence UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable. Carl Sagan ufo cases interesting 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. Carl Sagan technology rain jobs 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. Carl Sagan college religious thinking 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. Carl Sagan stars journey long I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars.... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light.... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me. Carl Sagan stars religious book The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Carl Sagan predictability regularity force
