Carl Sagan Quotes

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.

And I might add the confidence with which distracted persons do oftentimes, when they are awake, think, they see black fiends in places, where there is no black object in sight without them.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.

All men are liable to error; and most men, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

It is not unusual for the eye or ear to play tricks with one, but when such illusions and delusions are taken for the Spirit forms of the departed and voices of the dead instead of being recognized as some subjective phenomena brought about by a physical cause, the situation takes on a grave aspect.

Sometimes we misinterpret, sometimes we misunderstand, sometimes we make mistakes.

Perception is not always reality.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets you fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.

... the fallibility of human brains is in nothing more obvious than in proof reading.

It is not that the intellect sometimes misunderstands. Rather, the intellect always misunderstands. It is not that the intellect sometimes errs, it is that the intellect is the error.

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.

Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies.

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

Oftentimes what you see cancels out what you perceive.

Hallucinations and illusions are not facts useful for scientific investigation.

What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.