People everywhere wish for a better world---a more peaceful and prosperous world, where their children can live healthy, happy lives---and they have long sought the right intellectual tools with which to pursue this goal. Religion works best when it emphasizes common decency, philosophy when stressing our ignorance, art when exposing us to visions larger than ourselves, history by drawing lessons from the past---but the most effective tools are liberalism and science. They may on occasion lead to harmful results, as may anything else: You can poison a prophet with a Girl Scout cookie. But science and liberalism have an unequaled capacity for doing good---for reducing cruel ignorance and villainous certitude, encouraging freedom and effective government, promoting human rights, putting food in the mouths of the hungry and attainable prospects in their future. If we keep our heads, use our heads, nourish learning, tend the fires of freedom, and treat one another with justice and compassion, our descendants may say of us that we had the vision to do science, and the courage to live by liberty.
Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 290-291.
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