When a honeybee dies it releases a death pheromone, a characteristic odour that signals the survivors to remove … - Carl Sagan

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It's very hard to be honest with yourself when something's just not working.

Carl Sagan

When a honeybee dies it releases a death pheromone, a characteristic odour that signals the survivors to remove it from the hive. The corpse is promptly pushed and tugged out of the hive. The death pheromone is oleic acid. What happens if a live bee is dabbed with a drop of oleic acid? Then no matter how strapping and vigourous it might be, it is carried kicking and screaming out of the hive.

Acid, Bees, Live, Science, Strapping, Tugged

Same Author Quotes

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Disservice, Doe, Exclusive, Mutually, Science, Spirituality

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

Celebration, Cosmos, Joining, Merging, Understanding

Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

Awesome, Overcoming, Space, Threshold, Tiny, Utterly

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

Atheist, Doubt, Evidence, Inspire, Know, Times

We were wanderers from the beginning.

Beginning, Wanderers