Tag Archive for: skepticism

"A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know."

Laurence J. Peter

"I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself."

Georges I. Gurdjieff

"Only a few know, how much one must know to know how little one knows."

Werner Karl Heisenberg

"Given any rule, however "fundamental" or "necessary" for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite."

Paul Feyerabend

"There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory."

Robert A. Heinlein

"The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it."

Ludwig von Mises

"Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth."

Rupert Sheldrake

"Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system."

Rupert Sheldrake

"A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice."

Karl Popper

"We do not know anything - this is the first. Therefore, we should be very modest - this is the second. Not to claim that we do know when we do not - this is the third. That's the kind of attitude I'd like to popularize. There is little hope for success."

Karl Popper

"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."

Karl Popper

"You must always be willing to truly consider evidence that contradicts your beliefs, and admit the possibility that you may be wrong.

Intelligence isn’t knowing everything, it’s the ability to challenge everything you know."

Unbekannt

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Richard Charles Lewontin

"An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook."

Neil Postman

"Knowledge is found only by those who have questions."

Hans-Georg Gadamer

"Doubt is the origin of wisdom"

René Descartes

"Doubt is the first step in gaining knowledge; without it, we could not progress. Doubt means we are questioning our beliefs and prepared to learn new things."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

Bertrand Russell