Carl Sagan Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Children, Sun

• Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Kids, Science

  Psychology Today Interview, www.psychologytoday.com. January 1, 1996.

• I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hands, America

  "A Disturbing 1995 Prediction by Carl Sagan Accurately Describes America of Today" by PAUL RATNER, bigthink.com.

• 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.

  Carl Sagan

  Jesus, Children, Names

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.209, Ballantine Books

• If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Country, Children, Teaching

  "The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Book by Carl Sagan, ch. 25: "Real Patriots Ask Questions", 1995.

• We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Children, Teaching

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.434, Ballantine Books

• 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, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Book, Teaching

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.66, Ballantine Books

• Scientists can routinely predict a solar eclipse, to the minute, a millennium in advance. You can go to the witch doctor to lift the spell that causes your pernicious anaemia, or you can take Vitamin B12. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. If you're interested in the sex of your unborn child, you can consult plumb-bob danglers all you want . . . but they'll be right, on average, only one time in two. If you want real accuracy . . . try amniocentesis and sonograms. Try science.

  Carl Sagan

  Sex, Children, Real

• We are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Profound, Cosmos

• One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.

  Carl Sagan

  Education, Children, Giving

• Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Believe, Mean

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.251, Simon and Schuster

• If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Children, Religion

• Recent research shows that many children without enough to eat wind up with diminished capacity to understand and learn (“cognitive impairment” ). Children don't have to be starving for this to happen. Even mild undernourishment — the kind most common among poor people in America — can do it.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Wind, America

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

• There is a report that says that kids who watch violent TV programs tend to be more violent when they grow up. But did the TV cause the violence, or do violent children preferentially enjoy watching violent programs?

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Growing Up, Kids

• The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Children, Future

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.90, Ballantine Books

• The visions we offer our children shape the future.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Vision, Shapes

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.90, Ballantine Books

• Time spent with children is time well spent. Their little minds are not constrained by 'reality' or focused upon goals. Anything and everything is possible. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Reality, Imagination

• Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hero, Long

• 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?

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Cutting, Winter

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.400, Ballantine Books

• A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchisin g them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Mean, Survival

• As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Sky, Earth

  "Cosmos". p. 318. Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

• Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is . . .

  Carl Sagan

  Nature, Children, Important

• We are the children equally of the Sky and the Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Sky, Earth

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.348, Ballantine Books

• I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.

  Carl Sagan

  Encouragement, Children, Powerful

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