Nevertheless his prodigious intellectual powers persisted unabated. In 1696, the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli challenged his colleagues to so… - Carl Sagan

Dois homens chegaram a um buraco no céu. Um pediu ao outro ajuda para se erguer até a abertura... Mas era tão bonito no céu que o homem que espiou pela beirada esqueceu tudo, esqueceu o companheiro a quem tinha prometido ajudar a subir e simplesmente saiu correndo para entrar em todo o esplendor celeste. De um poema em prosa esquimó iglulik, do início do século XX, recitado por Inugpasugjuk a Knud Rasmussen, o explorador ártico da Groenlândia

And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the sceptical movement is in its polarization: Us v. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; an if not, you're beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the sceptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted.

And therefore I would say that the first thing to do is to realize that governments, all governments, at least on occasion, lie. And some of them do it all the time - some of them do it only every second statement - but, by and large, governments distort the facts in order to remain in office.