Excerpt from "Pale Blue Dot"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehwWe can see the entire Cosmos series at Hulu for free (at least for now):
http://www.hulu.com/search?query=cosmos&st=1Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" should be required reading for any advanced high school diploma and for all college students. He had a keen interest in the stumbling blocks (obvious and not so obvious) to human civilization.
http://www.philosophy.thecastsite.com/readings/godwantsyoudead/demonhauntedworld.pdf"... science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, 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, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
