Broca's Brain Quotes

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“BothBarnumandH. L. Menckenare said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body’s warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“النقص ليس في الذكاء الذي هو متوفر بكثرة، و لكنه في التدريب المنظم على التفكير النقدي الذي هو سلعة نادرة”
― Carl Sagan, رومانسية العلم

“I wonder how many potential Einsteins have been permanently discouraged through competitive examinations and the forced feeding of curricula.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“العلم هو طريقة للتفكير أكثر مما هو مجموعة من المعارف”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“It was difficult to hold Broca's brain without wondering whether in some sense Broca was stillinthere—his wit, his skeptical mien, his abrupt gesticulations when he talked, his quiet and sentimental moments.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Might it be possible at some future time, when neurophysiology has advanced substantially, to reconstruct the memories or insight of someone long dead?...It would be the ultimate breach of privacy.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“I believe in Spinoza’s God, who revealed himself in the harmony of all being, not in the God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men” —a more subtle religious view embraced by”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Voltaire argued that if God did not exist Man would be obliged to invent him, and was reviled for the remark.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“والكون يجبر الذين يعيشون فيه على أن يفهموه. وتلك المخلوقات التي تنظر إلى الخبرات اليومية وكأنها مجرد اختلاط مشوش بغير نظام - ودون إمكانية التنبؤ بالأحداث - هي في خطر ماحق. فالكون ينتمي إلى أولئك الذين لديهم تصور له ولو بصورة جزئية.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Many of the problems facing us may be soluble, but only if we are willing to embrace brilliant, daring and complex solutions. Such solutions require brilliant, daring and complex people. I believe that there are many more of them around—in every nation, ethnic group and degree of affluence—than we realize.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“القومية من أمراض الطفولة، وهي حصبة الجنس البشري”
― Carl Sagan, رومانسية العلم

“The idea of science as a method rather than as a body of knowledge is not widely appreciated outside of science, or indeed in some corridors inside of science.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Broca was quoted as saying, “I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Tsiolkovsky wrote: “The Earth is the cradle of mankind. But one does not live in the cradle forever.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“if we have several hundred or several thousand cultures, each with its own cosmology, we should not be astounded if, every now and then, purely by chance, one of them proposes an idea that is not only correct but also impossible for them to have deduced.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“There is nothing inhuman about an intelligent machine; it is indeed an expression of those superb intellectual capabilities that only human beings, of all the creatures on our planet, now possess.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Those who make uncritical observations or fraudulent claims lead us into error and deflect us from the major human goal of understanding how the world works. It is for this reason that playing fast and loose with the truth is a very serious matter.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science

“Society corrupts the best of us. It is a little unfair, I think, to criticize a person for not sharing the enlightenment of a later epoch, but it is also profoundly saddening that such prejudices were so extremely pervasive. The question raises nagging uncertainties about which of the conventional truths of our own age will be considered unforgivable bigotry by the next. One way to repay Paul Broca for this lesson which he has inadvertently provided us is to challenge, deeply and seriously, our own most strongly held beliefs.”
― Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science