The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark Quotes
"As she often did, my mother had changed her clothes and made up her face in anticipation of my father’s arrival."
"There are people fighting out there, killing each other."
"How can you tell when someone is only imagining?"
"On a Sunday in that same year, my father had patiently explained to me about zero as a placeholder in arithmetic."
"The ‘World of Tomorrow’ would be sleek, clean, streamlined and, as far as I could tell, without a trace of poor people."
"My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science."
"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
"Isn’t it confusing to have the same name as that scientist guy?"
"Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudo-science."
"Jobs and wages depend on science and technology."
"How can we affect national policy - or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives - if we don’t grasp the underlying issues?"
"Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses of action."
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
"In an age more sceptical than most, they crave reassurance."
"Considering how many tortillas have been pounded out since the beginning of the world, it would be surprising if a few didn’t have at least vaguely familiar features."
"Magical properties have been ascribed to ginseng and mandrake roots, in part because of vague resemblances to the human form."
"Plants and animals that suggest a face may be less likely to be gobbled up by creatures with faces."
"The whole landscape revealed itself as the creation of a single thought."
"Our view of the world is duller and more confined than nature intended."
"All we know for sure is that nature created them and at the same time gave us the apparatus to perceive them and minds to appreciate their endless fascination."
"The lure of the marvellous blunts our critical faculties."
"For a complex terrain sculpted by unfamiliar processes, amateurs examining photographs, especially near the limit of resolution, may get into trouble."
"Scepticism must be a component of the explorer’s toolkit, or we will lose our way."
"A credulous mind... finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such." - Samuel Butler, Characters (1667-9)
"A large number of sincere people are exploring alternative approaches to questions of personal meaning, spirituality, healing, and paranormal experience in general."
"The sceptic might take a clue from cultural anthropology and develop a more sophisticated scepticism by understanding alternative belief systems from the perspective of the people who hold them."
"To the extent that sceptics have a psychological or sociological theory of New Age beliefs, it tends to be very simplistic."
"If a given phenomenon can already be plausibly understood in terms of matter and energy, why should we hypothesize that something else is responsible?"
"Aren’t they interested to see how well their beliefs hold up against the best counterarguments the sceptics can muster?"
"Most of the ideas never make it to the outside world. Only those that pass a rigorous self-filtration make it out to be criticized by the rest of the scientific community."
"Both scepticism and wonder are skills that need honing and practice."
"Their harmonious marriage within the mind of every schoolchild ought to be a principal goal of public education."
"Every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question."
"A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places and cultures. It has been the means for our survival."
"For others there was no access to the liberating power of science education."
"Science is supported because it provides spectacular benefits at all levels in society."
"In every sport the players seem to perform in streaks."
"Scientists do not constitute a voting bloc. They have no effective lobby."
"The continuous seven-days-a-week schedule was maintained, so that anyone would be able to help anytime."
"Why grant money now, so nerdish scientists talking incomprehensible gibberish can indulge their hobbies, when there are urgent unmet national needs?"
"Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn."
"The vast majority have no idea how bad their reading is."
"If scientists cannot make such predictions, is it likely that politicians or industrialists can?"
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."
"The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories."
"The cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance."
"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas."
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy."
"Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the mass myths."
"The time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united."
"If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
"Every act of Congress, every Supreme Court decision, every Presidential National Security Directive, every change in the Prime Rate is an experiment."