Carl Sagan Quote Appreciation Thread

[Pandy]

"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... I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? 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."

Carl Sagan
(The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)

[General Anesthetic]

"At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images "projected" at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation."

Not 100% sure but I think this is also from Demon Haunted World.

[Pandy]

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

Carl Sagan

[Pandy]

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for the belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe"

Carl Sagan

[scudinvi]

All I can tell you Pandy, is I like the way you think. Your way of thinking is on the right track in my opinion...;)

Carl Sagan is one of the most brilliant minds to have ever walked on the face of this Earth imo.

[Pandy]

All I can tell you Pandy, is I like the way you think. Your way of thinking is on the right track in my opinion...;)

Carl Sagan is one of the most brilliant minds to have ever walked on the face of this Earth imo.

thanks very much Scudinvi :) I never forget that there is much that I know that I know, equally there must also be much that I don't know that I don't know.
I do know that after watching Cosmos last year I was blown away by Carl Sagan's passion and insistence on the truth and scientific method.