"Talvez o subproduto mais angustiante da revolução científica tenha sido acabar com muitas de nossas crenças mais acalentadas e consoladoras. O proscênio antropocêntrico bem-arrumado de nossos ancestrais foi substituído por um universo imenso, frio e indiferente, no qual os humanos são relegados à obscuridade. Mas vejo surgir na nossa consciência um universo de uma tal magnificência e com uma ordem tão intricada e elegante que supera qualquer coisa imaginada pelos nossos antepassados. E se grande parte do universo pode ser compreendida em termos de algumas leis simples da natureza, aqueles que desejam acreditar em Deus podem com certeza atribuir essas belas leis a uma razão que sustenta toda a natureza. Na minha opinião, é muito melhor compreender o universo como ele é realmente do que imaginar um universo como gostaríamos que ele fosse."

"Uma das lições mais tristes da história é a seguinte: se formos enganados por muito tempo, a nossa tendência é rejeitar qualquer evidência do logro. Já não nos interessamos em descobrir a verdade. O engano nos aprisionou. É simplesmente doloroso demais admitir, mesmo para nós mesmos, que fomos enganados."

"Se aceitamos a verdade literal de toda e qualquer palavra da Bíblia, então a Terra deve ser chata. O mesmo vale para o Corão. Dizer que a Terra é redonda significa ser ateísta. Em 1993, a suprema autoridade religiosa da Arábia Saudita, o xeque Abdel-Aziz lbn Baaz, emitiu um edito, fatwa, declarando que o mundo é chato. Todos os adeptos da hipótese da Terra redonda não acreditam em Deus e devem ser punidos. Entre muitas outras ironias, está o fato de que a evidência lúcida de que a Terra é uma esfera, reunida pelo astrônomo greco-egípcio Cláudio Ptolomeu no século II, foi transmitida para o Ocidente por astrônomos muçulmanos e árabes. No século IX, eles deram ao livro de Ptolomeu em que é demonstrada a esfericidade da Terra o nome de Almagesto, "o maior"."

"His daughter remembered him saying that he hoped none of his children would ever believe something just because it was he who told it to them." Carl Sagan on Darwin's daughter, extracted from Ronald W. Clark, The survival of Charles Darwin: A biography of a man and an idea (NY: Random House, 1984)

"I always return an agnostic. I cannot comprehend how God can fit those curious beasts into his moral order". Charles Gore, successor of Samuel Wilberforce as Anglican Bishop of Oxford.

"When I contemplate you, you turn me into a complete atheist, because I cannot possibly believe that there is a Divine Being that could create anything so monstruous". Charles Gore, shaking his finger at a chimpanzee (Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953, p235.)

"Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known." By the wife of the Anglican Bishop of Worcester (Quoted in Monroe W. Strickberger, Evolution. Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1990, p57).

"In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one thing alone: the love of knowledge." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II, 17.

"A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them -- without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled conscienses, we can render whole species extinct -- for our perceived short-term benefit, or even throuhg simple carelesness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unabridgeable gap has thus a pratical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin's formulation of this answer was: 'Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.'"

"Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is, in substance and structure, one with the brutes." T.H. Huxley in Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863, p132).

"[T]he human brain is an imperfect instrument built up through long geological periods. Some of its levels of operation are more primitive and archaic than others. Our heads, modern man has learned, may contain weird and irrational shadows of the subhuman past -- shadows that under stress can sometimes elongate and fall darkly across the threshold of our rational lives. Man has lost the faith of the eighteenth century in the enlightening power of pure reason, for he has come to know that he is not a consistently reasoning animal. We have frightened ourselves with our own black nature and instead of thinking 'We are men now, not beasts, and must live like men', we have eyed each other with wary suspicion and whispered in our hearts, 'We will trust no one. Man is evil. Man is an animal. He has come from the dark wood and the caves'." Loren Eiseley, in Darwin's Century (New York: Doubleday, 1958, p345)

"Man is connected by his nature... with the whole tribe of animals, and so closely with some of them, that the distance between his intellectual faculties and their... appear, in many instances, small, and would probably appear still less, if we had the means of knowing their motives, as we have of observing their actions." Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke, quoted in A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea.

"Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and of a dog to a man." Ambroise Bierce, The Enlargened Devil's Dictionary.

"Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings of Earth. Instead, we are more like the noveau riche, incompletely accommodated to our recent exalted state, insecure about who we are, and trying to put as much distance as possible between us and our humble origins. It's as if our nearest relatives, by their very existence, refute all our explanations and justifications. So as counterweights to human arrogance and pride, it is good for us that there are still apes on Earth."

"[M]an is at the top of the pecking order. I think that God gave us dominion over these creatures... consider the human being on a higher scale. Maybe that's because a chicken doesn't talk... God created Adam and Eve, and from there all of us came. God created us pretty much as we look today." Manuel Lijan, U.S. Secretary of the Interior under president Bush (father), arguing against protecting endangered species. In Time, May 25, 1992, pp57-59.

"Tudo o que o senhor não compreende, reverendo Rankin, atribui a Deus. Deus é o lugar para onde o senhor varre todos os mistérios do mundo, todos os desafios à nossa inteligência. O senhor simplesmente desliga o cérebro e diz que é coisa de Deus."
Eleanor Arroway para o reverendo Billy Jo Rankin

"Os cientistas sentem prazer em entender as coisas."
Eleanor Arroway

"Você sabe que, como a Terra gira ao redor do sol, no passado os poderosos do mundo... os líderes religiosos, os líderes seculares... no passado pretenderam que a Terra não se movia absolutamente. Estavam procurando argumentos para serem poderosos. E a verdade os fazia sentir-se muito pequenos. A verdade os assustava; minava o poder deles. Aquelas pessoas achavam a verdade perigosa."
Eleanor Arroway para Palmer Joss

"In a time in some respects similar to our own, St. Augustine of Hippo, after a lusty and intellectually inventive young manhood, withdrew from the world of sense and intellect and advised others to do likewise: "There is another form of temptation, even more fraught and danger. This is the disease of curiosity. ... It is this which drives us on to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond out understanding, which can avail us nothing and which men should not wish to learn ... In this immense forest, full of pitfalls and perils, I have drawn myself back, and pulled myself away from these thorns. In the midst of all these things which float unceasingly around me in everyday life, I am never surprised at any of them, and never captivated by my genuine desire to study them. ... I no longer dream of stars." The time of Augustine's death, 430 A.D., marks the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe."

"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science."

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies, were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

"In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?"