Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques advertising and suggests that it thrives when products lack real differentiation, leading to consumer distrust and poor judgment.
Carl Sagan's quote highlights the paradox of modern advertising, which often relies on large budgets to promote products that are essentially similar. He argues that if products were truly different in quality, consumers would naturally gravitate towards the superior option. Instead, advertising may manipulate perceptions, fostering distrust in personal judgment and encouraging a culture of ignorance among consumers.
Themes
AdvertisingConsumerismJudgmentTrustManipulation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about ethical marketing practices at a business seminar.
More from Carl Sagan
All quotes →In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.
Carl SaganRead
How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
Carl SaganRead
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
Carl SaganRead
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
Carl SaganRead
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
Carl SaganRead
Similar quotes
Strange and marvelous things will happen with constant regularity as you alter your life and begin living in harmony with the laws of the universe.
Earl NightingaleRead
Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
Orson WellesRead
The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.
John F. KennedyRead
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.
Victor HugoRead
Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinetisimal change ripples outward —ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter —maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.
John GreenRead
Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.
Tullian TchividjianRead