Carl Sagan: Trending quotes (page 18)

“But our openness to the dazzling possibilities presented by modern science must be tempered by some hard-nosed skepticism. Many interesting possibilities simply turn out to be wrong. An openness to new possibilities and a willingness to ask hard questions are both required to advance our knowledge. And the asking of tough questions has an ancillary benefit: political and religious life in America, especially in the last decade and a half, has been marked by an excessive public credulity, an unwillingness to ask difficult questions, which has produced a demonstrable impairment in our national health. Consumer skepticism makes quality products. This may be why governments and churches and school systems do not exhibit unseemly zeal in encouraging critical thought. They know they themselves are vulnerable.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 5, “Night Walkers and Mystery Mongers: Sense and Nonsense at the End of Science” (pp. 68-69)

School , Question , Health , Knowledge

“For many people, the shoddily thought out doctrines of borderline science are the closest approximation to comprehensible science readily available. The popularity of borderline science is a rebuke to the schools, the press and commercial television for their sparse, unimaginative and ineffective efforts at science education; and to us scientists, for doing so little to popularize our subject.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 5, “Night Walkers and Mystery Mongers: Sense and Nonsense at the End of Science” (p. 63)

School , People , Education , Science

“Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 5, “Night Walkers and Mystery Mongers: Sense and Nonsense at the End of Science” (pp. 58-59)

Money , Training , Thinking , Intelligence

“Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter , “” (pp. 15-16)

Courage , Time , Question , Universe

“All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how we can deal with the universe—both the outside and the inside universe—without studying it. The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern—if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table—we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 1, “Broca’s Brain” (pp. 13-14)

School , Study , Understanding , Freedom

“Society corrupts the best of us. It is a little unfair, I think, to criticize a person for not sharing the enlightenment of a later epoch, but it is also profoundly saddening that such prejudices were so extremely pervasive. The question raises nagging uncertainties about which of the conventional truths of our own age will be considered unforgivable bigotry by the next.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 1, “Broca’s Brain” (p. 11)

Question , Personality , Truth , Thinking

“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.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Introduction (p. xii)
Broca's Brain (1979)

Idea

“Both borderline science and many religions are motivated in part by a serious concern about the nature of the universe and our role in it, and for this reason merit our consideration and regard. In addition, I think it possible that many religions involve at their cores an attempt to come to grips with profound mysteries of our individual life histories, as described in the last chapter. But both in borderline science and in organized religion there is much that is specious or dangerous. While the practitioners of such doctrines often wish there were no criticisms to which they are expected to reply, skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Introduction (p. xii)
Broca's Brain (1979)

Religion , History , Nature , Universe

“Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature. This resonance, extracted by natural selection, between our brains and the universe may help explain a quandary set by Einstein: The most incomprehensible property of the universe, he said, is that it is so comprehensible.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 9, “Knowledge is Our Destiny: Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (pp. 242-243)

Law , Intelligence , Help , Nature

“The entire evolutionary record on our planet, particularly the record contained in fossil endocasts, illustrates a progressive tendency toward intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about this: smart organisms by and large survive better and leave more offspring than stupid ones.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 9, “Knowledge is Our Destiny: Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (p. 240)

Intelligence , Stupidity

“That in nonarithmetic operations the small and slow human brain can still do so much better than the large and fast electronic computer is an impressive tribute to how cleverly the brain is packaged and programmed—features brought about, of course, by natural selection. Those who possessed poorly programmed brains eventually did not live long enough to reproduce.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 8, “The Future Evolution of the Brain” (p. 224)

Nature

“Without these experimental tests, very few physicists would have accepted general relativity. There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brilliance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 193)

Parting

“The search for patterns without critical analysis, and rigid skepticism without a search for patterns, are the antipodes of incomplete science. The effective pursuit of knowledge requires both functions.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 192)

Knowledge , Science , Search

“There is no way to tell whether the patterns extracted by the right hemisphere are real or imagined without subjecting them to left-hemisphere scrutiny. On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (pp. 190-191)

Imagination , Search , Future , Problem

“There is no doubt that right-hemisphere intuitive thinking may perceive patterns and connections too difficult for the left hemisphere; but it may also detect patterns where none exist. Skeptical and critical thinking is not a hallmark of the right hemisphere. And unalloyed right-hemisphere doctrines, particularly when they are invented during new and trying circumstances, may be erroneous or paranoid.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 189)

Thinking

“Evolution often uses this strategy. Indeed, the standard evolutionary practice of increasing the amount of genetic information as organisms increase in complexity is accomplished by doubling part of the genetic material and then allowing the slow specialization of function of the redundant set.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 183)

Parting

“The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it. Foretelling disaster is probably not much fun; Pollyanna was much happier than Cassandra. But the Cassandric components of our nature are necessary for survival.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 3, “The Brain and the Chariot” (p. 74)

Future , Nature

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 2, “Genes and Brains” (p. 31)

“Note that in all this interaction between mutation and natural selection, no moth is making a conscious effort to adapt to a changed environment. The process is random and statistical.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 2, “Genes and Brains” (p. 28)

Effort , Change , Making love , Nature

“A mutation in a DNA molecule within a chromosome of a skin cell in my index finger has no influence on heredity. Fingers are not involved, at least directly, in the propagation of the species.”

Carl Sagan

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 2, “Genes and Brains” (p. 27)