I Believe Our Future Depends Powerfully On

I Don't Want To Believe. I Want To Know.

The Universe Forces Those Who Live In It To Understand It.

I Believe That Part Of What Propels Science Is The Thirst For Wonder. It's A Very Powerful Emotion. All Children Feel It. In A First Grade Classroom Everybody Feels It; In A Twelfth Grade Classroom Almost Nobody Feels It, Or At Least Acknowledges It. Something Happens Between First And Twelfth Grade, And It's Not Just Puberty. Not Only Do The Schools And The Media Not Teach Much Skepticism, There Is Also Little Encouragement Of This Stirring Sense Of Wonder. Science And Pseudoscience Both Arouse That Feeling. Poor Popularizations Of Science Establish An Ecological Niche For Pseudoscience.

We Are, In The Most Profound Sense, Children Of The Cosmos.

Scientists Make Mistakes. Accordingly, It Is The Job Of The Scientist To Recognize Our Weakness, To Examine The Widest Range Of Opinions, To Be Ruthlessly Self-critical. Science Is A Collective Enterprise With The Error-correction Machinery Often Running Smoothly.