Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that exploration and curiosity are fundamental to human nature.
Carl Sagan emphasizes the inherent nature of humanity to explore and seek knowledge. No matter how much we learn or where we go, we continue to possess a wanderer's spirit, always looking for new experiences and understanding in the vast universe around us.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students to embrace their adventurous spirit.
Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
You canβt crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.
We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say.
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