The Virtue of Humility

Humility, like so many of these virtues, is about caring what others think and feel, about giving validation to others instead of seeking it all for yourself. The best way for parents to teach this, of course, is to model humility ourselves. Monitor your next conversation. How often can you catch yourself saying, “I may be wrong about that”—no one should know more than a skeptic that everything includes an element of doubt—and how often do your kids hear you saying it? How often do yo...

 Scientists Must Remain Modest

Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him that, compared with the gigantic aims of science, his own contribution, no matter how important, is only a drop in the ocean of truth.

 Tolerance for Ambiguity

I have a tolerance for ambiguity. It's clear to me that there's some questions that humans don't have the answers to and what arrogance to imagine we have answers to all questions. Science is sometimes, I know, attacked for supposed arogance, but I think it's the most humble occupation and discipline around. Because, instead of trying to impose our preconceptions, our predispositions on the Universe, we are open before the Universe to see what the Universe has to offer. Science is in the busi...

 Ann Druyan on the Humility of Science

I think that science tolerates the unknown in a way that religion doesn't. My argument is not with people who search for god. My argument is with people who feel that our understanding of god is completed. And those are the people who make so much of our existence on this planet such a hell, because they really think that they have the right to kill other people, to hurt them, because of what they understand god's will to be. That's a very destructive thing. So science... Science is--the who...