On October 1 2021, an Imgur account shared a quote about bamboozlers and charlatans attributed to astrophyicist and science advocate Carl Sagan:
At the bottom an “Occupy Democrats” watermark appeared; the page shared the meme on Facebook late on September 30 2021. Occupy Democrats prefaced the quote with “Carl Sagan perfectly explains why some just can’t quit Trump,” continuing:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.
“Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” — Carl Sagan
A search for snippets of the quote led to an entry on the site Goodreads (which is occasionally a source for misquotes or shaky attributions):
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Unlike some of the iffier Goodreads quote pages, Carl Sagan’s “bamboozle” quote was attached to a specific published source — his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. On page 241, the quote appeared on Google Books’ entry for that work:
After “… never get it back,” Sagan added: “So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.”
An Occupy Democrats meme crossposted to Imgur correctly attributed the “bamboozled” and “charlatans” quote to Carl Sagan. The excerpt quoted appeared in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." | Imgur
- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." | Occupy Democrats/Facebook
- Bamboozle | Merriam-Webster
- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." | Imgur