12 quotes
We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.
Bringing Science Down to Earth (1994)
The best antidote for pseudoscience, I firmly believe, is science.
Broca's Brain (1979)
If the press descended, the science would surely suffer.
Contact (1985)
The idea of science as a method rather than as a body of knowledge is not widely appreciated outside of science, or indeed in some corridors inside of science.
Broca's Brain (1979)
The enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Science is, at least in part, informed worship.
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)
The history of science—especially physics—has in part been the tension between the natural tendency to project our everyday experience on the universe and the universe's noncompliance...
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
The mercantile tradition that had led to Ionian science also led to a slave economy. You could get richer if you owned a lot of slaves.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990)
A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. We are all fallible, even leaders. But however clear it is that criticism is necessary for progress, governments tend to resist.
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1997)
Vigorous criticism is more constructive in science than in some other areas of human endeavor because in science there are adequate standards of validity that can be agreed upon by competent practitioners the world over. The objective of such criticism is not to suppress but rather to encourage the advance of new ideas: those that survive a firm skeptical scrutiny have a fighting chance of being right, or at least useful.
Broca's Brain (1979)
Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.
The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)