Extinction is the rule, Survival is the exception.
Carl Sagan: November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996
For Carl Sagan Day…exercise your critical thinking skills with this collection of quotes.
ON CRITICAL THINKING
Broca’s Brain Book, 1986
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’s Last Interview Television, 1996
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
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 ambling along.
It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a bill of rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise we don’t run the government. The government runs us.
ON THE EARTH’S CLIMATE
Those who are skeptical about carbon dioxide greenhouse warming might profitably note the massive greenhouse effect on Venus. No one proposes that Venus’s greenhouse effect derives from imprudent Venusians who CONTINUE READING: Extinction is the rule, Survival is the exception. | Live Long and Prosper