Science is not only compatible with spiri... - Carl Sagan - Quotes.Pub

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

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Carl Sagan Quotes

The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us – there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.

In manned Earth orbital flights, still other problems arise. Consider a religious Muslim or Jew circling the Earth once every ninety minutes. Is he obligated to celebrate the Sabbath every seventh orbit? Spaceflight provides access to environments very different from those in which we and our customs have grown up.

The Cosmos is rich beyond measure – in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.

Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science.

Let’s see if I got this right,” she would say to herself. “I’ve taken an inert gas that’s in the air, made it into a liquid, put some impurities in a ruby, attached a magnet, and detected the fires of creation.

It is pointless to worry about the possible malevolent intentions of an advanced civilization with whom we might make contact. It is more likely that the mere fact they have survived so long means they have learned to live with themselves and others. Perhaps our fears about extraterrestrial contact are merely a projection of our own backwardness, an expression of our guilty conscience about our past history: the ravages that have been visited on civilizations only slightly more backward than we.

There seem to be many people who simply wish to be told an answer, any answer, and thereby avoid the burden of keeping two mutually exclusive possibilities in their heads at the same time.

Perhaps for the first time in any medium, the person teaching you science – Carl Sagan – cared about the tangled mental roadways that can rob a person of rational thought.

If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted.

Lashley also reported no apparent change in the general behavior of a rat when significant fractions – say 10 percent – of its brain were removed. But no one asked the rat of its opinion.

Na Arean sat alone in space as a cloud that floats in nothingness. He slept not, for there was no sleep; he hungered not, for as yet there was no hunger. So he remained for a great while, until a thought came to his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing.

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.

Sometimes she would be engaged in a laboratory exercise or a seminar when the instructor would say, “Gentlemen, let’s proceed,” and sensing Ellie’s frown would add, “Sorry, Miss Arroway, but I think of you as one of the boys.” The highest compliment they were capable of paying was that in their minds she was not overtly female.

By far the most exciting, satisfying and exhilarating time to be alive is the time in which we pass from ignorance to knowledge on these fundamental issues; the age where we begin in wonder and end in understanding. In all of the four-billion-year history of life on our planet, in all of the four-million-year history of the human family, there is only one generation privileged to live through that unique transitional moment: that generation is ours.

Then, if we really want our celestial neighbors to know how far we have progressed intelectually, we should have included pictures of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Nearly everyone in ancient Egypt exhorted the gods to let the Pharaoh live ’forever. These collective prayers failed. Their failure constitutes data.

Many of the problems facing us may be soluble, but only if we are willing to embrace brilliant, daring and complex solutions. Such solutions require brilliant, daring and complex people. I believe that there are many more of them around – in every nation, ethnic group and degree of affluence – than we realize.

No question; language can free us of feeling, or almost. Maybe that’s one of its functions – so we can understand the world without becoming entirely overwhelmed by it.

Placebos can be astonishingly effective, especially for colds, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms that are plausibly generated by the mind. Conceivably, endorphins – the small brain proteins with morphinelike effects – can be elicited by belief. A placebo works only if the patient believes it’s an effective medicine. Within strict limits, hope, it seems, can be transformed into biochemistry. As.

The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.

The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largely responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything – new ideas and established wisdom.

Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder. But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished – perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds – on the distant planet Earth.

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