"It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology." (Chapter 1, pg. 7)

"We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 mg. of tetracycline every 12 hours. We can try nearly futile psychoanalytic talk therapy on the schizophrenic patient or we can give him 300 to 500 mg. a day of clozapine. The scientific treatments are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the alternatives." (Chapter 1, pg. 9)

"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 second or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance." (Chapter...