The Future of Ideas (2001)
Context: A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.
This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
“This planet is run by crazy people. Remember what they have to do to get where they are. Their perspective is so narrow, so…brief. A few years. In the best of them a few decades. They care only about the time they are in power.”
Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 23 (p. 403)
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Carl Sagan 365
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996Related quotes
I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: Over the past few decades, we've gotten into the bad habit of looking to the government to solve every personal and social crisis that comes along. People have really come to misunderstand government's scope. There's only so much it can do. For one thing, it's a terrible social regulator. And morals and values aren't things that legislation can even touch. You can't legislate morality. It doesn't work.
Letter to C. P. Scott (20 January 1920), in Trevor Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911-1928 (London: Collins, 1970), p. 380
1920s
An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I
Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)
Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 7, Structuring the Global Economy, p. 189
Happy birthday, Tall Man! ‘Phantasm’ turns 30 https://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/phantasm/ (October 16, 2009)