A Quote by Carl Sagan

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

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Almost Between Consulting Critical Crystals Darkness Decline Distinguish Faculties Feels Good Horoscopes Noticing Our Slide Steep Superstition True Unable Without

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

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

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

We've sweated and torn out our hair trying to reconstruct our chosen lives, to fashion them like literary sculptures, at once monumental and yet human. We've applied all of our intelligence, our empathy, our critical faculties, our compassion - and we think, in our delusion, that it's still 1960, and our work is going to get noticed.

Nigel Hamilton

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

Carl Sagan

Even as technology becomes increasingly critical to the way we live our lives, power our world and defend our shores, the United States has allowed the production of minerals crucial in the creation of these advanced products to slide.

Hank Johnson

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

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

Alain de Botton

What is true for the emotions may also be true for the intellect. Some of our perplexities may come from a mismatch between the purposes for which our cognitive faculties evolved and the purposes to which we put them today.

Steven Pinker

The decline in American pride, patriotism, and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called 'science fiction' by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of 'aliens' without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God.

Jerry Falwell

The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart; that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our their ought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is work of man's will. For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.

Richard Rolle

We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.

Ingmar Bergman

I believe that, at times, if some of us are almost too critical of our society, it's because our sensitivity and our concern for justice makes us aware that our nation falls terribly short of its highest potential.

Mahesh Bhatt

Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.

Dave Freudenthal

My colleagues, while it is good that the Nation is finally focused on the critical issue of securing our ports, our rhetoric and our passion about Dubai must be matched by the funding necessary to keep our ports and our citizens safe.

Allyson Schwartz

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Pema Chodron

We are eating hybridized and genetically modified (GMO) foods full of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and additives that were unknown to our immune systems just a generation or two ago. The result? Our immune system becomes unable to recognize friend or foe - to distinguish between foreign molecular invaders we truly need to protect against and the foods we eat or, in some cases, our own cells. In Third World countries where hygiene is poor and infections are common, allergy and autoimmunity are rare.

Mark Hyman, M.D.

A Quote by Carl Sagan

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