The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surpr...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You squeeze the eyedropper, and a drop of pond water drips out onto the microscope stage. You look at the projected image. The drop is full of life - strange beings swimming, crawling, tumbling; high dramas of pursuit and escape, triumph and tragedy....

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, ha...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don’t Sophocles, Democritus,...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Another of Mack’s patients says that the aliens have been taking eggs from her since she was sexually mature, and that her reproductive system baffles her gynecologist. Is it baffling enough to write the case up and submit a research paper to The N...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

But 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 judgment until the evidence is...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

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...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

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...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we’re talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The astonishing fact is that similar mathematics applies so well to planets and to clocks. It needn’t have been this way. We didn’t impose it on the Universe. That’s the way the Universe is. If this is reductionism, so be it.

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.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

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.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the propheti...

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?

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark