A Quote by Carl Sagan

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Carl Sagan

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Ability Agendas Almost America Authority Awesome Back Between Children Consulting Critical Crystals Darkness Decline Distinguish Even Faculties Feels Few Foreboding Good Grandchildren Grasp Hands Horoscopes Interest Issues Lost My Children Noticing Our Own People Powers Public Public Interest Question Representing Set Slide Superstition Technological Those Time True Unable Very Without

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Carl Sagan
American - Scientist
November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996

Clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

Carl Sagan

Our age has become so mechanical that this has also affected our recreation. People have gotten used to sitting down and watching a movie, a ball game, a television set. It may be good once in a while, but it certainly is not good all the time. Our own faculties, our imagination, our memory, the ability to do things with our mind and our hands-they need to be exercised. If we become too passive, we get dissatisfied.

Maria von Trapp

So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.

Marian Wright Edelman

There are some things we can control and others we simply cannot. And our ability to distinguish between them is critical to our happiness and wellbeing. Sometimes unexpected stuff will happen to us or around us. Our true power lies in our response.

Clifton Anderson

America is great, because America is good. And it really is up to all of us to make that true, now and in the future, and particularly for our children and our grandchildren.

Hillary Clinton

Shall any of us repine that it is our lot to live in perilous and sacrificial days? Rather I say we are glad that we live in this time of mortal struggle and are doing our share to put to flight the powers of darkness. Our children and grandchildren will be proud that this country saved freedom for itself by helping to preserve it for the world.

Thomas W. Lamont

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

Carl Sagan

A state of shock is what results when a gap opens up between events and our initial ability to explain them. When we find ourselves in that position, without a story, without our moorings, a great many people become vulnerable to authority figures telling us to fear one another and relinquish our rights for the greater good.

Naomi Klein

America, we weaken our ties when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive that people of good character aren't even willing to enter into public service; so coarse with rancor that Americans with whom we disagree are seen not just as misguided but as malevolent. We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others, when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt, and when we sit back and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them.

Barack Obama

When our children and grandchildren look back on this period, one question will overwhelm all the rest: Did we do everything in our power to fight and to win the war on terror? That's the fundamental question this generation faces.

George W. Bush

As adults, we realize that the real future lies in the hands of our children and grandchildren. Our first priority should be the nurturing and education of America's youth.

Margaret Cuomo

People really are very concerned when they put their head on the pillow at night - they're concerned that America may cease to be what America has been because we are leveraging the future of our children and our grandchildren.

Marsha Blackburn

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

Samuel Johnson

We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.

Humphry Davy

It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.

Charles Caleb Colton

Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.

William Temple

A Quote by Carl Sagan

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