Some Carl Sagan quotes for today. Please add on

[kid a]

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.
Carl Sagan

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.
Carl Sagan

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?
Carl Sagan

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. Sagan

[jrw14125]

1. "YOU are a part of the Milky Way!"

Spoken to a 6th grader, to great effect...

I just made a post on this today in the science forum under "Cosmos observations"

My favorite Sagan saying, though: "I never said that."

[Book Lover]

2. To make an apple pie from scratch,

you must first invent the universe.

[Jigarotta]

3. dear, sweet Carl, how I miss him. ;(

I just loved his little boy excitement at the wonders of the universe.

[derby378]

4. From THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD

We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. 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...

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

[CrispyQ]

5. Good thread.

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 someting like that happened in politics or religion. --Carl Sagan, 1987


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. --Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

[JHB]

6. "It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic..."

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. -- Carl Sagan

We are star stuff -- Carl Sagan

[derby378]

7. Here's a bunch of quotes from like-minded folks

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
Thomas Henry Huxley

There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
Percy Williams Bridgeman

etc.

http://www.ntskeptics.org/quotes.htm

[AllegroRondo]

8. "If we are alone in the universe,

it seems an awful waste of space."

[jrw14125]

12. I said this to my fundie stepfather, know what his reply was?

Something like, oh, that's not true - we don't know why god created it or what he intends for us to do with it when we die.

as in, the rest of the universe is reserved for us after we die. of course, spiritual realms and beings by nature cannot be observed thru natural observations, yet every object in the universe can in some capacity. i guess heaven is a black hole? gamma ray burst? neutron star? quasar? pulsar? cosmic rays are angels? :)

Of course, my mother's response to the missing link fossils reported last week:

"Do we have to have this evolution stuff?"

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. "Billions and billions...."

I still feel a shiver down my spine when I remember him from Nova, describing how many stars there were in the universe. There was something of the awed child in how he said that bit.

[SmokingJacket]

10. I have "The Demon Haunted World" out from the library right now.

I had forgotten what an asset Sagan was to us -- and how desperately we need him, or someone like him, now.

[jrw14125]

11. I JUST read it - best book I've read in years