"Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." 2/2

Carl Sagan, "The Demon Haunted World" 1996

"If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding the truth. The Bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken..." 1/2

"Unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." 3/3

"And no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline..." 2/3