«في كل مرة نختبر فيها أفكارنا في مواجهة العالم الخارجي، فنحن نمارس العلم؛ وحين ننكب على أنفسنا ونصبح غير انتقاديين، حين نخلط بين الآمال والحقائق، فنح… - Carl Sagan

En lugar de juzgar a la gente por sus méritos y defectos individuales, nos concentramos en un par de detalles de información sobre ellos y a continuación los colocamos en una serie de casillas previamente establecidas.
Con eso nos ahorramos el esfuerzo de pensar, al precio en muchos casos de cometer una profunda injusticia.

[...] I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.

It is pointless to worry about the possible malevolent intentions of an advanced civilization with whom we might make contact. It is more likely that the mere fact they have survived so long means they have learned to live with themselves and others. Perhaps our fears about extraterrestrial contact are merely a projection of our own backwardness, an expression of our guilty conscience about our past history: the ravages that have been visited on civilizations only slightly more backward than we.