Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
Carl SaganRead
How lucky we are to live in this time / the first moment in human history / when we are in fact visiting other worlds
Interpretation
We live in a remarkable era where exploring beyond our planet is a reality.
Carl Sagan's quote emphasizes the extraordinary privilege of living in a time when humanity has the capability to explore outer space. It reflects a sense of wonder and gratitude for scientific advancements that allow us to visit and study other worlds, highlighting the significance of exploration and the potential for discovery that defines our current era.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of space exploration, you might use this quote to emphasize our achievements.
Science is a way to not fool ourselves.
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.
How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder?
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.
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.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability.
Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century.
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.
Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.
The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.
To understand the universe in the state that it began in, the so-called Big Bang, we need laws of physics that work better than our current set of rules and procedures, which break down when we try to push them back to the beginning.
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