Quotations About Science

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis with an ugly fact.
- Thomas Henry Huxley

Keep an open mind – but not so open that your brain falls out.

- Anonymous

Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored.
- Aldous Huxley

The most erroneous stories are those we know best and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Steven Jay Gould

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
- Rene Descartes

In science, error precedes the truth, and it is better that it should go first than last.
- Hugh Walpole

It has become almost a cliche to remark that no one boasts of an ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast of ignorance of science.
- Richard Dawkins

Science is defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
- James Randi (famous magician and professional debunker of frauds)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
- Philip K. Dick (science fiction author)

There are in fact two things, science and opinion, the former begets knowledge,the latter ignorance.
- Hippocrates

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
- Richard P. Feynman (won a Nobel prize in physics and shared another)

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
- Adam Smith

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways ofthinking about them.
- Sir William Bragg

Science is a way of thinking more than it is a body of knowledge.
- Carl Sagan

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.
- Richard P. Feynman (won a Nobel prize in physics, and shared another)

True science teaches, above all, to doubt, and to be ignorant.
- Miguel de Unamuno

The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning ... For by doubting, we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at the truth.
- Peter Abelard (12th century)

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Rihard P. Feynman (won a Nobel prize in physics, and shared another)

The most dangerous tendency of the modern world is the way in which bogus theories are given the force of dogma.
- Jean Danielou

The plural of anecdote is not data.

- Frank Kotsonis

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
- Richard P. Feynman

Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
- Claude Bernard, M.D.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
- Sherlock Holmes (The fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle)

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open.
- Frank Zappa