When you buy a used car, you kick the tires, you look at the odometer, you open up the hood. If you do not feel yourself an expert in automobile engines, you bring a friend who is. And you do this with something as unimportant as an automobile. But on the issues of the transcendent, of ethics, of morals, of the origins of the world, of the nature of human beings, on those issues should we not insist upon at least equally skeptical scrutiny?
Carl SaganOne of the saddest lessons of history is this: If weโve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. Weโre no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. Itโs simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that weโve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl SaganThe fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true.
Carl SaganWe have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.
Carl SaganProbably a dozen times since their death I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them ... It doesn't seem strange to me.
Carl Sagan