2015) The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. [...] Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. If we're true to its values, it can tell us when we're being lied to. It provides a midcourse correction to our mistakes. The more widespread its language, rules, and methods, the better chance we have of preserving what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had in mind.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2016) Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can put independent and even rebellious ideas in the heads of their subjects. The British Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia wrote in 1671:

I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have [them] these [next] hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!

But the American colonists, understanding where liberty lies, would have none of this.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2017) Absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely.

Frederick P. Hitz
CIA Inspector General (1995)
quoted by Carl Sagan in
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

[Note: cf. #423 Acton. The earliest citation I can find for the Hitz quote is in the New York Times (7/30/1995)]

2018) When we are asked to swear in American courts of law - that we will tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" - we are being asked the impossible. It is simply beyond our powers. Our memories are fallible; even scientific truth is merely an approximation; and we are ignorant about nearly all of the Universe. Nevertheless, a life may depend on our testimony. To swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the limit of our abilities is a fair request. Without the qualifying phrase, though, it's simply out of touch. But such a qualification, however consonant with human reality, is unacceptable to any legal system. If everyone tells the truth only to a degree determined by individual judgment, then incriminating or awkward facts might be withheld, events shaded, culpability hidden, responsibility evaded, and justice denied. So the law strives for an impossible standard of accuracy, and we do the best we can.

In the jury selection process, the court needs to be reassured that the verdict will be based on evidence. It makes heroic efforts to weed out bias. It is aware of human imperfection. [...] The American system of jurisprudence recognizes a wide range of factors, predispositions, prejudices, and experiences that might cloud out judgment, or affect our objectivity - sometimes even without our knowing it. It goes to great, perhaps even extravagant, lengths to safeguard the process of judgment in a criminal trial from the human weakness of those who must decide on innocence or guilt. Even then, of course, the process sometimes fails.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2019) In matters of criminal justice, the Bill of Rights recognizes that temptation that may be felt by police, prosecutors, and the judiciary to intimidate witnesses and expedite punishment. The criminal-justice system is fallible: Innocent people may be punished for crimes they did not commit; governments are perfectly capable of framing those who, for reasons unconnected with the purported crime, they do not like. So the Bill of Rights protects defendants. A kind of cost-benefit analysis is made. The guilty may on occasion be set free so that the innocent will not be punished. This is not only a moral virtue; it also inhibits the misuse of the criminal-justice system to suppress unpopular opinions or despised minorities. It is part of the error-correction machinery.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2020) The State of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.

Ronald Reagan
quoted by Carl Sagan in
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

[Note: Although Sagan reports Reagan's remark, in the form "Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?", as being from a 1980 campaign speech when Reagan was a candidate for President, this does not appear to be correct – unless Reagan repeated at that time an earlier remark. The quote seems to have been made by Reagan in 1967 when he was Governor of California, probably at a press conference, commenting on the firing of Clark Kerr as President of the University of California for having been too lenient with student protestors on UC campuses. The earliest citation I can find is from an essay by William F. Buckley in the National Review (11/28/1967).]

2021) There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

George Washington
address to Congress (1/8/1790)
quoted by Carl Sagan in
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2022) Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen - or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. 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 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 reason 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
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2023) Those who seek power at any price detect a social weakness, a fear that they can ride into office. It could be ethnic differences [...] perhaps different amounts of melanin in the skin; different philosophies or religions; or maybe it's drug use, violent crime, economic crises, school prayer or "desecrating" (literally, making unholy) the flag.

Whatever the problem, the quick fix is to shave a little freedom off the Bill of Rights. Yes, in 1942, Japanese-Americans were protected by the Bill of Rights, be we locked them up anyway - after all, there was a war on. Yes there are Constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, but we have a war on drugs and violent crime is racing out of control. Yes, there's freedom of speech, but we don't want foreign authors here, spouting alien ideologies, do we? The pretexts change from year to year, but the result remains the same: concentrating more power in fewer hands and suppressing diversity of opinion - even though experience shows the danger of such a course of action.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2024) Even a casual scrutiny of history reveals that we humans have a sad tendency to make the same mistakes again and again. We're afraid of strangers or anybody who's a little different from us. When we get scared, we start pushing people around. We have readily accessible buttons that release powerful emotions when pressed. We can be manipulated into utter senselessness by clever politicians. Give us the right kind of leader and, like the most suggestible subjects of the hypnotherapists, we'll gladly do just about anything he wants - even things we know to be wrong. The framers of the Constitution were students of history. In recognition of the human condition, they sought to invent a means that would keep us free in spite of ourselves.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

2025) [W]hen governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic.

Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

[Note: See #1754-1757, #2007-2014, #2026-2031, #2032-2038 and #2039-2046 for additional quotes from The Demon-Haunted World]