Carl Sagan Quotes, Doe Quotes, Pseudoscience Quotes

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.

5 years ago

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Doe Quotes , Pseudoscience Quotes

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

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Death Quotes , Faith Quotes

Clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Feel Good Quotes , Darkness Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Animal Quotes , Culture Quotes

We live in an in-between universe where things change all right...but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Law Quotes , Patterns Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Night Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Religious Quotes , Political Quotes

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Media Quotes

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Demand Quotes , Claims Quotes

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.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Book Quotes , Dark Quotes

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Comforting Quotes , Fantasy Quotes

Our passion for learning ... is our tool for survival.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Passion Quotes , Learning Quotes

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Children Quotes

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Sea Quotes

I'd like the [Cosmos] series to be so visually stimulating that somebody who isn't even interested in the concepts will just watch for the effects. And I'd like people who are prepared to do some thinking to be really stimulated.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Science Quotes , Thinking Quotes

We are all star stuff.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Stars Quotes , Stuff Quotes

The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality, but we are connected; not in the trivial ways that astrology promises, but in the deepest ways.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Reality Quotes , Astrology Quotes

If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Superstitions Quotes

Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by 'reality' or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Children Quotes , Reality Quotes

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

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Tags : Carl Sagan Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Religion Quotes