Sagan Quote?

[FramerDave]

Could use some quick help here. Was it Carl Sagan who said something along the lines of "Keep an open mind, but no so open that your brains fall out" ? I'm pretty sure he did, but haven't been able to find a source.

Could someone confirm or correct this? A source would be great too. This is going in an article and I want it to be correct.

Thanks!

 

[Madalch]

I thought Asimov said that, although the sentiment may have been repeated.

(A quick Google shows that it's been repeated by many people. Jame Hrynyshyn wrote an article in Skeptic in March of 2003 examining the source of it, but I can only find the opening lines online.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2898687/When-brains-fall-out-the.html )

 

[Denver]

A couple possible sources;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Mind_(talk_show)
...Barnard College dean Virginia Gildersleeve among others, "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."

http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?req...=0006-3568&volume=052&issue=09&page=0850&ct=1
A great quote from Bertrand Russell is cited by Kelly Smith in the book: “One should always keep an open mind, but not so open that one's brains fall out” p. 705.)

 

[Diagoras]

I don't recall Sagan ever saying that. I always thought it was just a proverb.

 

[Dicon]

I've said it a few times, so please feel free to cite me as the source.

 

[sinclairmcevoy]

I used to know who said that, but I was so open minded back then...well....

 

[krelnik]

Was it Carl Sagan who said something along the lines of "Keep an open mind, but no so open that your brains fall out" ?

I'm finding many pages that attribute it to James Oberg:

http://www.inquiringminds.org/education/syllabus-lilienfeld.html

Skepticism implies open-mindedness. But students will be urged to remember James Oberg's warning that an open mind is a virtue, "but not so open that one's brains fall out."

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~rasmus/skepticism/skeptic.html

http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/08/open-wide-your-mind.html

Nobody indicates what book or article he said it in, though.

--Tim Farley

 

[krelnik]

Oh, here's a kicker. There's a reference in a biography of Sagan that attributes it to Oberg!

Carl Sagan: A Biography
By Ray Spangenburg
Page 26

As he would later point out, "Keeping an open mind is a virtue, but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open that your brains fall out" (Sagan, 1996, p.187).

Link to the page in Google Books

It looks like the reference there is to "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Sagan.

--Tim Farley

 

[bjb]

I checked my copy of "Demon-Haunted World" and the quote is right there on page 187. However, in this article:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~greenmont/misc/brains.html

James Oberg claims to have stolen the quote from someone else.

 

[krelnik]

I found a better, earlier source that clearly predates both Oberg and Sagan.

In 1954 Columbia University was celebrating its bicentennial, and decided on a theme of "mans right to knowledge". As part of this, this 11 page booklet by Arthur Hays Sulzberger^WP (long-time editor of the New York Times) was published, "Man's right to knowledge and the free use thereof". (It might be the transcript of a keynote speech, not sure).

Anyway, on page 8 this quote appears:

Now I do not believe in softness of any kind in fighting tyranny, subversion, or infiltration. Fortunately there is a long public record to this effect on the editorial pages of the New York Times. Although I favor the open mind, I certainly do not advocate that the mind should be so open that the brains fall out.

I've seen others cite Sulzberger for this quote. However, having found that in Google Books I dug a little further, setting a custom date range to see if any sources predate the above. I find that the phrase appears in a number of publications associated with higher education that date around the 1940's.

There's one in the Association of American Colleges Bulletin from 1942.

There's one in the Harvard Educational Review from 1941.

Several sources as early as 1938 attribute it to William Allan Neilson^WP, president of Smith College^WP.

So the quest continues, but it seems like it originated at one of the northeastern US colleges some time in the 1930s. This clearly debunks the idea that this originated with either Sagan or Oberg.

 

[krelnik]

Sorry to bump such an ancient thread, but I've been continuing to research this, and I found a blogger who specializes in researching quotes who dug into it a few months ago. He identified a source for the quote I had never heard of.

I still had a few other details, so I wrote up a post on this for the new INSIGHT skeptic blog that posted today. Some excerpts:

So now we know Sagan, Oberg and Sulzberger have all disclaimed being the original source of the quote. But when had Neilson said it?

Trying to run this reference down led me to a 1940 volume of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly....

I had filed away the Smith Alumnae reference with a note to myself to try to get a copy of those pages to find out the details. But O’Toole was not as easily dissuaded—he found it. And that leads us to a final possible originator.

Let us keep our minds open, by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mould the world. But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong, even if there are statesmen who hide their designs under the cloak of high-sounding phrases.
— Walter Kotschnig​

He doesn’t actually say “open mind” but all the other elements of the quote are present. I was able to find in the online catalog of Kotschnig’s papers that this was a speech titled “Do we want peace?” given on Wednesday, November 8, 1939 at Smith.

So this Saturday, be sure to wish your skeptic friends a happy 75th brains-fall-out day.

 

[NotJesus]

Pretty sure it was Francoise Sagan who said "A dress makes no sense unless it inspire men to take it off of you."

 

[Rincewind]

I have a dim memory of reading that Mark Twain said it!

Can't recall where I read it, however...

 

[krelnik]

You might be thinking of "An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it", which is sometimes mis-attributed to Twain, but may be by Moses Coit Tyler.