"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
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Science quotes
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Science quotes (page 5 of 352)
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"I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope]."
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"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true."
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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
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"To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."
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"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true."
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"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life."
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"Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."
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"In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it."
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"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt."
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"There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough."
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"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."
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"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
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"There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history."
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"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God - the design argument of Paley - updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
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"The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced -- by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix."
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"Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other."
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"We are consuming our forests three times faster than they are being reproduced. Some of the richest timber lands of this continent have already been destroyed, and not replaced, and other vast areas are on the verge of destruction. Yet forests, unlike mines, can be so handled as to yield the best results of use, without exhaustion, just like grain fields."
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"The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations."
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"I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries."
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