Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.
The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance.
When you realize that no one really knows what they are doing and that everyone is doing the best they can according to their own level of consciousness, life gets a lot easier. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.
Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.
Every star may be a sun to someone.
You have to know the past to understand the present.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us --- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?
We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think as well as we can. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. I believe we have an obligation to fight for life on Earth - not just for ourselves, but for all those, humans and others, who came before us, and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after.
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.
The words "question" and "quest" are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
The Bill of Rights decoupled religion from the state, in part because so many religions were steeped in an absolutist frame of mind - each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on the truth and therefore eager for the state to impose this truth on others.
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
Wisdom lies in understanding our limitations.
We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
One of the great commandments of science is: 'Mistrust arguments from authority.'
we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers
Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.
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