Carl Sagan

I've been slowly reading Carl Sagan's book, THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK and taking notes. I've always loved Carl Sagan. I loved watching his series on television, COSMOS and the book with the same name. I copied some important quotes at the beginning of the book about science, critical thinking, and democracy. Here are a few that I thought were important:

"...The most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes...." p. 28

"...Abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness." p. 38

"Mistrust arguments from authority," is one of the great commandments of science. p. 28

"The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began--in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it....Science thrives , indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence, and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition....It can tell us when we're being lied to. It provides mid-course correction to our mistakes. The more widespread its language, rules and methods, the better chance we have of preserving what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had in mind....If we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us--and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along." p. 38-39

"Keeping an open mind is a virtue--but as the space engineer James Oberg once said, 'not so open that your brains fall out.' Of course, we must be willing to change our minds when warranted by new evidence. But the evidence must be strong. Not all claims to knowledge have equal merit." p. 187