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"We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?"
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"But you can't just leave it at that!" said Anathema, pushing forward. "Think of all things you could do! Good things."Like what?" said Adam suspiciously."Well... you could bring all the whales back, to start with."He put his head on one side. "An' that'd stop people killing them?"She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes."An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you ask me to do about 'em?" said Adam. "No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale."
"Religion [dharma] is that where there is no irreligion (adharma, immorality). Religion cannot exist where there is irreligion. There can be only one or the other. Behind every intention, there is either [the force of] religion or [the force of] irreligion."
"We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?"
"Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep."
"It is better to be slave to righteousness than slave to sin."
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."
"Never sacrifice what's right for what's convenient."
"Any religion which demands death for other people is itself worthy of nothing less than it expects for others. In fact, it is probably long overdue."
Explore more quotes by Carl Sagan
"We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?"
"[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."
"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. This is a world populated by beings far more exotic than in any science fiction movie..."
"A typical chromosomal DNA molecule in a human being is composed of about five billion pairs of nucleotides. But since there are four different kinds of nucleotides, the number of bits of information in DNA is four times the number of nucleotide pairs. Thus if a single chromosome has five billion (5 X 10^9) nucleotides, it contains twenty billion (2 X 10^10) bits of information. We also see that if more than some tens of billions (several times 10^10) of bits of information are necessary for human survival, extragenetic systems will have to provide them: the rate of development of genetic systems is so slow that no source of such additional biological information can be sought in the DNA."
"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
"Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out."
"I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students."
"While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts--a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the "humanities." Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a "humanity" as poetry."
"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."
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