Book detail: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
In this seminal work, the author delves into the principles of scientific inquiry, critical analysis, and evidence-based reasoning. The book serves as a guide to discerning fact from fiction, advocating for the importance of skepticism and rationality in understanding the natural world.
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“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“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.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“These are all cases of proved or presumptive baloney. A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion -- wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P. T. Barnum meant when he said, 'There's a sucker born every minute.' But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic -- however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which scepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudoscience, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way, it's an artefact from times long gone.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“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.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Those who are not afraid of monsters tend not to leave descendants.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Demon” means “knowledge” in Greek. “Science” means “knowledge” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Christianity may be good and Satanism evil. Under the Constitution, however, both are neutral. This is an important, but difficult, concept for many law enforcement officers to accept. They are paid to uphold the penal code, not the Ten Commandments … 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.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“[In] everyday life, it is very rare that we are confronted with new facts about events of long ago. Our memories are almost never challenged. They can, instead, be frozen in place, no matter how flawed they are, or become a work in continual artistic revision.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“We're worried - and for good reason - about what it means fir the human future if we have only ourselves to rely upon.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Do you believe in UFOs?’ I’m always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not of evidence. I’m almost never asked, ‘How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“[...] I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“For 99 percent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made. Except for firsthand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the children’s game “Telephone,” over tens and hundreds of generations, information would slowly be distorted and lost.
Books changed all that. Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate — with the best teachers — the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“If you grow up in a household where there are books, where you are read to, where parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins read for their own pleasure, naturally you learn to read. If no one close to you takes joy in reading, where is the evidence that it's worth the effort?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“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 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 faculties 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 American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, 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”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“The UFO abduction syndrom portrays, it seems to me, a banal Universe. The form of the supposed aliens is marked by a failure of the imagination and a preoccupation with human concerns. Not a single being presented in all these accounts is as astonishing as a cockatoo would be if you had never before beheld a bird.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Baloney, bamboozles, careless thinking, flimflam, and wishes disguised as facts are not restricted to parlor magic and ambiguous advice on matters of the heart. Unfortunately, they ripple through mainstream political, social, religious, and economic issues in every nation.
-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World. P. 244”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Si queremos que el mundo escape de las temibles consecuencias del crecimiento de la población global y de los diez mil o doce mil millones de personas en el planeta a finales del siglo XXI, debemos inventar medios seguros y más eficientes de cultivar alimentos, con el consiguiente abastecimiento de semillas, riego, fertilizantes, pesticidas, sistemas de transporte y refrigeración. También se necesitarán métodos contraconceptivos ampliamente disponibles y aceptables, pasos significativos hacia la igualdad política de las mujeres y mejoras en las condiciones de vida de los más pobres.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Si uno está muerto, no puede hacer nada para ser feliz.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“...todo gobierno se degenera cuando se deja solos a los gobernantes, porque éstos -por el mero hecho de gobernar- hacen mal uso de la confianza pública.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“cuando hierve el fanatismo a nuestro alrededor, los hábitos de pensamiento familiares de épocas antiguas toman el control.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“her mezhep ve kült diğerleri üzerinde ahlaki bir denetimdir: "Rekabet ticarette olduğu kadar dinde de yararlıdır.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Una de las lecciones más tristes de la historia es ésta: si se está sometido a un engaño demasiado tiempo, se tiende a rechazar cualquier prueba de que es un engaño.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Es peligroso y temerario que el ciudadano medio mantenga su ignorancia sobre el calentamiento global, la reducción del ozono, la contaminación del aire, los residuos tóxicos y radiactivos, la lluvia ácida, la erosión del suelo, la deforestación tropical, el crecimiento exponencial de la población.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Hay preguntas ingenuas, preguntas tediosas, preguntas malformuladas, preguntas planteadas con una inadecuada autocrítica. Pero toda pregunta es un clamor por entender el mundo. No hay preguntas estúpidas.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“la ciencia es más que un cuerpo de conocimiento, es una manera de pensar.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Si la calidad de la educación que uno tiene a su alcance es inadecuada, si a uno le enseñan a memorizar al pie de la letra y no a pensar, si el contenido de lo que se nos da para leer viene de una cultura casi ajena, la alfabetización puede ser un camino lleno de obstáculos.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Si uno crece en una casa donde hay libros, donde alguien le lee, donde padres, hermanos, tías, tíos y primos leen por placer, es natural que aprenda a leer. Si no hay nadie cerca que disfrute leyendo, ¿dónde está la prueba de que vale la pena?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally - granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data - to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains—were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their scepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials and 35,000-year-old channellees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“And if the world does not in all respects correspond to our wishes, is this the fault of science, or of those who would impose their wishes on the world?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“In those cultures lacking unfamiliar challenges, external or internal, where fundamental change is unneeded, novel ideas need not be encouraged. Indeed, heresies can be declared dangerous; thinking can be rigidified; and sanctions against impermissible ideas can be enforced -- all without much harm. But under varied and changing environmental or biological circumstances, simply copying the old ways no longer works. Then, a premium awaits those who, instead of blandly following tradition, or trying to foist their preferences on to the physical or social Universe, are open to what the Universe teaches.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Another glorious feature of many modern science museums is a movie theater showing IMAX or OMNIMAX films. In some cases the screen is ten stories tall and wraps around you. The Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museu, the popular museum on Earth, has premiered in its Langley Theater some of the best of these films. 'To Fly' brings a catch to my throat even after five or six viewings. I've seen religious leaders of many denominations witness 'Blue Planet' and be converted on the spot to the need to protect the Earth's environment”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark