Carl Sagan on the dumbing down of America

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media... lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstitution, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

~ Carl Sagan, 1995

Carl Sagan on science and skepticism

Science is more than a body of knowledge.  It's 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're 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 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.

~ Carl Sagan, interview with Charlie Rose, 3:00 mark, May 27, 1996

Carl Sagan on the Big Lie

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. 

~ Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan on arguments from authority

Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" chapter (1995)

Carl Sagan on extinction

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

~ Carl Sagan