One of the saddest lessons of ...

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
 Carl Sagan

Quotes from the same author

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
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 Carl Sagan
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
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 Carl Sagan
If the constellations had been named in the twentieth century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky.
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 Carl Sagan
Probably a dozen times since their death I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them ... It doesn't seem strange to me.
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 Carl Sagan
The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.
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 Carl Sagan