Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

The City of Grief
space somewhere - beaming through my head and transmitting
thoughts, words, and images into the heads of anybody within
range . . . Images will pop into my head that I did not put there,
and vanish just as suddenly. Dreams are not dreams anymore -
they are more like Hollywood productions . . . They are smart
critters and they won't give up . . . Maybe all these little guys
want to do is communicate ... If I finally go psychotic from all
this pressure - or have another heart attack - there goes your
last sure evidence that there is life in space.
• I think I have found a plausible terrestrial scientific explanation
for numerous UFO reports. [The writer then discusses ball
lightning.] If you like my stuff, could you help me get it
published?
• Sagan refuses to take seriously the witnesses' reports of anything
that twentieth-century science can't explain.
• Now readers will feel free to treat abductees ... as if they are
victims of nothing more than an illusion. Abductees suffer the
same sort of trauma a rape victim endures, and to have their
experiences rejected by those closest to them is a second
victimization that leaves them without any support system.
Encounters with aliens is hard enough to cope with; victims
need support, not rationalizations.
• My friend Frankie wants me to bring back an ashtray or a
matchbook, but I think these visitors are probably much too
intelligent to smoke.
• My own feeling is that the alien abduction phenomena is little
more than a dreamlike sequence vicariously retrieved from
memory storage. There are no more little green men or flying
saucers than there are images of those things already stored in
our brains.
• When alleged scientists conspire to censor and intimidate those
who endeavor to offer new insightful hypotheses on conventional
theories . . . they no longer should be considered scientists,
but merely the insecure, self-serving impostors that they
apparently are ... In the same token, must we all still suppose
that J. Edgar Hoover was a fine FBI director, rather than the
homosexual tool of organized crime he was?
• Your conclusion that large numbers of people in this country,
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