In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.

Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can put independent and even rebellious ideas in the heads of their subjects.

Our passion for learning is our tool for survival.

But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

Some of science is very simple. When it gets complicated, that's usually because the world is complicated—or because we're complicated. When we shy away from it because it seems too difficult (or because we've been taught so poorly), we surrender the ability to take charge of our future. We are disenfranchised. Our self-confidence erodes.

through lowered educational standards, declining intellectual competence, diminished zest for substantive debate, and social sanctions against skepticism, our liberties can be slowly eroded and our rights subverted.

Abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.

Polybius:     Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

She consented to rote memorization, but knew that it was at best the hollow shell of an education. She did the minimum work necessary to do well in her courses, and pursued other matters.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

All thing I thought I knew; but now confess, the more I know I know, I know the less.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.