There is an established framework in which any scientist can prove another wrong and make sure everyone else knows about it.
His voice was right. She instantly remembered it. And his smell, his gait, his laugh. The way his beard abraded her cheek. All of it combined to shatter her self-possession. She could feel a massive stone seal being pried open and the first rays of light entering an ancient, almost forgotten tomb.
Mare, despite its Latin meaning, is the Old English word for incubus, and nightmare meant originally the demon that sits on the chests of sleepers, tormenting them with dreams.
Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of attitudes, memories, and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporation and individuals, the disappearance of competitive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principal of the separation of powers.
President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims.
We are made of starstuff. Some.
It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth.
If the enemy can think and feel, you might hesitate to kill them. And killing is very important. Better to see them as monsters.
Imagine a society in which every speech in the Congressional Record, every television commercial, every sermon had an accompanying error bar or its equivalent.
For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.
Hanya langit. Terkadang saya merasa saya akan jatuh ke langit.
Sakharov in the Cold War year 1968 boldly wrote – in a book published in the West and widely distributed in samizdat in the USSR – “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.
If the aliens would only keep all the folks they abduct, our world would be a little saner.
All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have. ALBERT EINSTEIN.
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved.
There may be such intelligences and such starships, but pulsars are not their signature. Instead, they are the doleful reminders that nothing lasts forever; that stars also die.
Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of charlatans.
Todo lo que hemos visto forma parte de un universo inmenso, complicado y maravilloso.
Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers.
In the jury selection process, the court needs to be reassured that the verdict will be based on evidence.