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"I am not very
skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid
much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who... have often thus been
deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable."
- Charles Darwin
"I know that most men,
including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom
accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige
them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining
to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have
woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
-Tolstoy
"When even the brightest
mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any
kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine
sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance
which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt
if I could do it myself."
- Mark Twain
"Doubt everything or
believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we
dispense with the need for reflection."
- Henri Poincare
"It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena that are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary beliefs of physics" - H. Bauer
"If a man is in too big
a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with
it."
- Wilbur Wright, 1902
"It's like religion.
Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the
opposite."
- Dr. Thomas Gold
"You can get into
a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who
don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against
it."
- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP meeting
"New and stirring things
are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question
arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?' "
- H. G. Wells
"The easy
confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to
suspect that my own is also."
- Mark Twain
"I believe there is no
source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a
fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE."
-William James
"Modern science
should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the
unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses."
-Martin Gardner
"Almost all really new
ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first
produced."
- Alfred North Whitehead
"The mind likes a
strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with
similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is
the most quickly acting antigen known to science."
- Wilfred Trotter, 1941
"When a distinguished
but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly
right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably
wrong."
- Arthur C. Clarke's First Law
"There are some people
that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em."
- Louis Armstrong
"The security provided
by a long-held belief system, even when poorly founded, is a strong impediment
to progress. General acceptance of a practice becomes the proof of its validity,
though it lacks all other merit."
- Dr. B. Lown, invented defibrillator
"The fact that an
opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly
absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread
belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
- Bertrand Russell
"New opinions are always
suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are
not already common."
- John Locke
"All great truths begin
as blasphemies."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Be not astonished at
new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to
be true because it is not accepted by many."
- Spinoza
"If we watch ourselves
honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even
before it has been completely stated."
- Wilfred Trotter
"When a man finds a
conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it
disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and
reason."
- Thucydides
"Science might be better
served when some scientists generate novel ideas while others carp at everything
new, than if all scientists could somehow become disinterestedly
skeptical."
- Dr. Henry H. Bauer
"'Type one' error is
thinking that something special is happening when nothing special really is
happening. 'Type two' error is thinking that nothing special is happening, when
in fact something rare or infrequent is happening.'
- M. Truzzi
William James used
to preach the "will to believe". For my part, I should wish to preach
the "will to doubt".... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but
the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
- Bertrand Russell Skeptical Essays,
1928
I cannot give any
scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction
that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true. The
importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a
proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to
critical examination.
- Peter B. Medawar, zoologist and
immunologist, Advice to a Young Scientist, 1979
"It would seem to me...
an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are
with the curiosity, filled to overbrimming as we are with questions, and
naturally talented as we are for the asking of clear questions, and then for us
to do nothing about, or worse, to try to suppress the questions..."
- Lewis Thomas
"Many discoveries must
have been stillborn or smothered at birth. We know only those which
survived."
- W. I. Beveridge, The art of scientific investigation
"The creative person
pays close attention to what appears discordant and contradictory... and is
challenged by such irregularities."
- F. Barron
"Genius in truth means
little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way"
- William James, 1896
"Man's greatest asset is
the unsettled mind."
- Isaac Asimov
"The voyage of discovery
lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes."
- Marcel Proust
"Research is to see what
everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Gyoergi
"A man receives only
what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be
linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
- H. D. Thoreau
"You cannot depend on
your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
- Mark Twain
"The man who cannot
occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the
causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of
a new idea."
- Max Planck
"If we knew what it was
we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
- Albert Einstein
"If what we regard as
real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy?
...But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a
theory...it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do
not know what reality is independent of a theory."
- Stephen Hawking
"Reality is that which,
when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Phillip K. Dick
"There are children
playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics,
because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago."
- Robert Oppenheimer
"The discovery of truth
is prevented more effectively not by the false appearance of things present and
which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but
by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
- Schopenhauer
"It is a puzzling thing.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth.'
and so it goes away. Puzzling."
- R. Pirsig
"They are ill
discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but
sea."
- Francis Bacon
"The universe is wider
than our views of it."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Everyone takes the
limits of his own vision for the limits of the world."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Who never walks save
where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries."
- J.G. Holland
"In questions of
science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a
single individual."
- Galileo Galilei
"It is as fatal as it is
cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste."
- John Tyndall
"A foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of small minds."
- Emerson
"Absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence."
- Sir Martin Rees (astronomer)
"I can't see any
farther. Giants are standing on my shoulders!"
- unknown
"In science it often
happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my
position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and
you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't
happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is
sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something
like that happened in politics or religion."
-Carl Sagan
"When I examined myself
and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has
meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
- A. Einstein
"All truths are easy to
understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
- Galileo Galilei
"Advances are made by
answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers."
- Bernhard Haisch, astrophysicist
"The most erroneous
stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or
question."
-Stephen Jay Gould
"It is a good
morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day
before breakfast. It keeps him young."
- Konrad Lorenz
"Inquiry is fatal to
certainty."
- William J. Durant
"In every work of
genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson "
There is no better soporific
and sedative than skepticism."
-Nietzche
"...By far the most
usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious
rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse
those who bear witness for them."
- William James
"The pressure for
conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors rejection of submitted
papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of
impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."
-Julian Schwinger, physicist
"When adults first
become conscious of something new, they usually either attack or try to escape
from it... Attack includes such mild forms as ridicule, and escape includes
merely putting out of mind."
- W. I. B Beveridge, The Art of Sci. Investigation, 1950
"New ideas are always
criticized - not because an idea lacks merit, but because it might turn out to
be workable, which would threaten the reputations of many people whose opinions
conflict with it. Some people may even lose their jobs."
- physicist, requested anonymity
"All truth passes
through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed;
and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Theories have four
stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense; ii) this is an interesting,
but perverse, point of view; iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; iv) I
always said so.
-J.B.S. Haldane, 1963
"When a thing is new,
people say: 'It is not true.' Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say:
'It is not important.' Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say:
'Anyway, it is not new.'"
- William James, 1896
"The radical invents the
views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." -
Mark Twain
"The soft-minded man
always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost
morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new
idea."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Loyalty to a petrified
opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
- Mark Twain
"No Pessimist ever
discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a
new heaven to the human spirit"
- Helen Keller
"A danger sign of the
lapse from true skepticism in to dogmatism is an inability to respect those who
disagree"
- Dr. Leonard George
"We should be eternally
vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we
loathe."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"If you are only
skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old
person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much
data to support you.) But every now and then, a new idea turns out to be on the
mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical
about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be
standing in the way of understanding and progress. "
- Carl Sagan
"In philosophical
discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is
an exhibition of folly."
- Whitehead
"There is a principle
which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in
everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to
investigation."
- Herbert Spencer, British philosopher
"It is a capital mistake
to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit
theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"Now, my suspicion is
that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can
suppose... I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of, in any philosophy"
- J.B.S. Haldane
"The farther the
experiment is from theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize."
- Joliet-Curie
"There are two possible
outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement.
If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a
discovery."
-Enrico Fermi
"Daring ideas are like
chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but they start a winning
game."
- Goethe
"If we will only allow
that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for
alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the
absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain... In order to make
progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar."
- Richard Feynman
"As long as we do
science, some things will always remain unexplained."
- Fritjof Capra
"The philosophies of one
age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday
has become the wisdom of tomorrow."
- Sir William Osler
"The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next." -Mark Twain
"Perhaps the only thing
that saves science from invalid conventional wisdom that becomes effectively
permanent is the presence of mavericks in every generation - people who keep
challenging convention and thinking up new ideas for the sheer hell of it or
from an innate contrariness."
- Dr. D. M. Raup, Paleontologist, U. Chicago.
"One thing I have
learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is
primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we
have."
- Einstein
"We do not understand
much of anything, from... the "big bang" , all the way down to the
particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to
make our way through in the centuries ahead."
-Lewis Thomas
"Beware when the great
God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as
when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is
safe, or where it will end."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing is too
wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature."
- Michael Faraday
"The skeptic will say, 'It may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint, but this does not prove that it corresponds to nature.' You are right, dear skeptic. Experience alone can decide on truth. - Albert Einstein
Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.
"I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it." - Charles Darwin
"It is a fool's
prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
- Shakespeare
"The beginning of
knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
- Frank Herbert
In any field, find the
strangest thing and then explore it."
- John A. Wheeler
"The most exciting
phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny...' "
- Isaac Asimov
"The only solid piece of
scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly
ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and
scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of
twentieth-century science to the human intellect."
- Lewis Thomas
"The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot
"Sit down before facts
like a child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
nothing."
- T.H. Huxley
"Truth is stranger than
fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth
isn't."
- Mark Twain
"Let the mind be
enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted
to the narrowness of the mind"
- Francis Bacon
"Man's mind stretched to
a new idea never goes back to its original dimension."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The test of a
first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the
same time and still retain the ability to function."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"It is the mark of an
educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting
it."
-Aristotle
"I can live with doubt
and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not
knowing than to have answers that might be wrong."
- Richard Feynman
"You cannot teach a man
anything, you can only help him find it within himself."
- Galileo
"The high-minded man
must care more for the truth than for what people think."
- Aristotle
"There are many
hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the
aperture to finding out what's right.
- Carl Sagan
"I personally feel it is
presumptuous to believe that man can determine the whole temporal structure of
the universe, its evolution, development and ultimate fate from the first
nanosecond of creation to the last 10^10 years, on the basis of three or four
facts which are not very accurately known and are disputed among the
experts."
- J. Bahcall, senior astrophysicist, Institute for Advanced Study
"Science for me is very
close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It's an intuition which
turns out to be reality at the end of it --and I see no difference between a
scientist developing a marvellous discovery and an artist making a
painting."
- C. Rubbia, Nobelist and director of CERN
"It is through science
that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."
- H. Poincare
"Science... is part and
parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the
understanding given by it is the only kind there is."
- C.G. Jung
"The person who thinks
there can be any real conflict between science and religion must be either very
young in science or very ignorant of religion."
- Joseph Henry, early American physicist
"Science is not only
compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of
spirituality."
- Carl Sagan
"Science without
religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
-Albert Einstein
"The intuitive mind is a
sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a
society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
"If you restrict the
journal to publishing only what pleases the referees, you end up publishing what
is popular, and while it does make everyone feel more comfortable, you are
guaranteed to miss the occasional breakthrough."
- A. Dessler, Editor, Geophysical Research Letters, (regarding small-comet
bombardment of Earth.)
"Biologists can be just
as sensitive to heresy as theologians."
- H.G. Wells
"A new scientific truth
does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that
is familiar with it."
- M. Planck
"Science advances
funeral by funeral."
(Planck?)
"You can recognize a
pioneer by the arrows in his back."
- Beverly Rubik
"If the man doesn't
believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does
nowadays, because now we can't burn him."
- Mark Twain
"Scientists are not the
paragons of rationality, objectivity, openmindedness and humility that many of
them might like others to believe."
- Marcello Truzzi, CSICOP
"The common idea that
scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not
so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and
ignore its weak spots... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in
following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm."
- Vannevar Bush
"Once a new paradigm
takes hold, its acceptance is extraordinarily rapid and one finds few who claim
to have adhered to a discarded method."
- Dr. B. Lown, inventor of the modern defibrillator
"For every expert, there
is an equal and opposite expert."
- anon
"One could not be a
successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular
conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of
scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just
stupid."
- J. D. Watson "The Double Helix"
"Desire for approval and
recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better,
stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads
to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious
for the individual and for the community."
- Albert Einstein
"Science is the search
for truth - it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm
to others."
- Linus Pauling
"A man with a new idea
is a crank until he succeeds."
- M. Twain
"Don't worry about
people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that good, you'll have to ram them
down people's throats."
- Howard Aiken
"Physical concepts are
the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely
determined by the external world."
- Einstein/Infeld in "The Evolution of Physics" 1938
"A new idea is delicate.
It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke, or
worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow."
- Charles Brower
"A great many people
think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their
prejudices."
- William James
"If you make people
think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think
they'll hate you."
- Don Marquis
"We must care to think
about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking
stops and action becomes mindless."
- James W. Fulbright
"Wisest is she who knows
she does not know."
-anon
"The only means of
strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let
the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party."
- John Keats
"There is nothing so
absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough."
-William James
"A lie repeated often
enough becomes the truth."
- G. Goebbels
"Never attribute to
conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
- paraphrase of "Hanlon's Razor" (fm R. Heinlein)
What I don't understand I despise, what I despise I reject. - THE REFEREE'S CREED
"Without deviation from
the norm, progress is not possible."
- Frank Zappa
AND FINALLY...
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire
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| Last modified: 18 April, 2003