The Wisdom Of Carl Sagan

May we humans grasp and embody the beauty, the wholeness, the love of what is waiting to be known within ourselves and which connects us with the incredible wonders, beauty, sacredness, and preciousness of all of life and the Universe in which we live. ❤ Molly

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting

to be known... 
 

We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.
 

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
 

We are, each of us, a multitude. Within us is a little universe. 
 

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
 

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
  

Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

After the Earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it's burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being - and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.
  

***** 
 

If we continue to accumulate only power and 

not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves...  
  

Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
 

Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone. 
 

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.  

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the Momentary Masters of a fraction of a dot [Earth]. 
 

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth — scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books — might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.
 

You have to know the past to understand the present. 
 

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
 

The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
 

Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity.  
 

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. 
 

Don't judge everyone else by your own limited experience. 
 

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. 
 

It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not.
 

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. 
 

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.
 

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception. 
 

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good. 
 

*****
 

The dumbing down of America is evident in 

the slow decay of substantive content, 

a kind of celebration of ignorance.
  

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical facilities in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential content, the 30 second sound-bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
 

***** 
 

 Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry 

with minds wide awake and a basic understanding 

of how the world works.
 

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
 

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
 

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

I don't want to believe. I want to know. 
 

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
 

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But 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, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
 

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. 
 

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
 

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.
 

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.   
 

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
 

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy. 

*****

 A new consciousness is developing.
 

Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
 

National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. 
 

Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives.
 

A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time. 
 

We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.
 

Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children. 
 

The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth. 
 

Every star may be a sun to someone. 
 

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

If you look at Earth from space you see a dot, that's here. That's home. That's us. It underscores the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. 
 

Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.
 

Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your planet.
 

To live in the hearts of others is to never die in those we leave behind. 
 

— Carl Sagan