All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious.
Carl SaganAbout author
- Author's profession: Scientist, Physicist
- Nationality: american
- Born: November 9, 1934
- Died: December 20, 1996
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See?" Fezzik pointed then. Far down, at the very bottom of the mountain path, the man in black could be seen running. "Inigo is beaten."Inconceivable!" exploded the Sicilian.Fezzik never dared disagree with the hunchback. "I'm so stupid," Fezzik nodded. "Inigo has not lost to the man in black, he has defeated him. And to prove it he has put on all the man in black's clothes and masks and hoods and boots and gained eighty pounds.
William Goldman
The dove descending breaks the air. With flame of incandescent terror. Of which the tongues declare. The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair. Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name. Behind the hands that wove. The intolerable shirt of flame. Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire. Consumed by either fire or fire.
T. S. Eliot
