And What Greater Might Do We Possess

Carl Sagan Always Used To Say That When He Was Trying To Explain Something To Someone, He Would Go Back To That Time When He Didn't Understand It, And Then He Would Retrace His Thought Steps So That He Could Make It Absolutely Clear, And That's One Of The Infinite Number Of Things I Learned From Him.

Carl Took On The Military-industrial Complex. He Campaigned Around The World For An End To The Production Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction. To Him It Was A Perversion Of Science.

I Remember That One Time Carl Sagan Was Giving A Talk, And He Spelled Out, In A Kind Of Withering Succession, These Great Theories Of Demotion That Science Has Dealt Us, All Of The Ways In Which Science Is Telling Us We Are Not Who We Would Like To Believe We Are. At The End Of It, A Young Man Came Up To Him And He Said: "what Do You Give Us In Return? Now That You've Taken Everything From Us? What Meaning Is Left, If Everything That I've Been Taught Since I Was A Child Turns Out To Be Untrue?" Carl Looked At Him And Said, Do Something Meaningful.

The Aspirations Of Democracy Are Based On The Notion Of An Informed Citizenry, Capable Of Making Wise Decisions. The Choices We Are Asked To Make Become Increasingly Complex. They Require The Longer-term Thinking And Greater Tolerance For Ambiguity That Science Fosters. The New Economy Is Predicated On A Continuous Pipeline Of Scientific And Technological Innovation. It Can Not Exist Without Workers And Consumers Who Are Mathematically And Scientifically Literate.

I Don't Have Any Faith, But I Have A Lot Of Hope, And I Have A Lot Of Dreams Of What We Could Do With Our Intelligence If We Had The Will And The Leadership And The Understanding Of How We Could Take All Of Our Intelligence And Our Resources And Create A World For Our Kids That Is Hopeful.