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Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 4 (1928)
 
Added on 20-Feb-15 | Last updated 20-Feb-15
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Now because 18 months ago the first dawn, three months ago broad daylight, but a very few days ago the full sun of the most highly remarkable spectacle has risen — nothing holds me back. I can give myself up to the sacred frenzy, I can have the insolence to make a full confession to mortal men that I have stolen the golden vessel of the Egyptians to make from them a tabernacle for my God far from the confines of the land of Egypt. If you forgive me I shall rejoice; if you are angry, I shall bear it; I am indeed casting the die and writing the book, either for my contemporaries or for posterity to read, it matters not which: let the book await its reader for a hundred years; God himself has waited six thousand years for his work to be seen.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer
The Harmonies of the World [Harmonices Mundi], Book 5, Introduction (1618)

Alt. trans.:
  • "It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer." [in David Brewster, The Martyrs of Science; or, the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841)]
  • "It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
  • "I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony ... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker." [in S Krantz and B Blank, Calculus: Multivariable (2006)]
  • "I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice.; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him."
 
Added on 18-Feb-15 | Last updated 18-Feb-15
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Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.

E. B. White (1899-1985) American author, critic, humorist [Elwyn Brooks White]
“The Preaching Humorist,” The Saturday Review of Literature (18 Oct 1941)

The apparent origin of "Analyzing humor is a bit like dissecting a frog: You learn how it works but you end up with a dead frog" (and variants). Also attributed to Mark Twain (not found in his writing) and André Maurois (who said something similar in 1960). See here for more.
 
Added on 16-Feb-15 | Last updated 16-Feb-15
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Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 4 (1928)
 
Added on 6-Feb-15 | Last updated 6-Feb-15
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Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomenon will no longer appear.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865)
 
Added on 30-Jan-15 | Last updated 30-Jan-15
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Theories are only verified hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865)
 
Added on 23-Jan-15 | Last updated 23-Jan-15
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He who will please the crowd and for the sake of the most ephemeral renown will either proclaim those things which nature does not display or even will publish genuine miracles of nature without regard to deeper causes is a spiritually corrupt person.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) German astronomer
De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus, Foreward (1601)
 
Added on 21-Jan-15 | Last updated 21-Jan-15
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When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865)
 
Added on 16-Jan-15 | Last updated 16-Jan-15
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‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper which must form the Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ’tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and Resolution which must compleat the real Philosopher.

Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 2 “Miscellany III” (1711)
 
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Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which is was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Journey to the Center of the Earth [Voyage au centre de la Terre], ch. 30 [Liedenbrock] (1864)
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
 
Added on 30-Dec-14 | Last updated 30-Dec-14
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Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale (1872)
 
Added on 26-Dec-14 | Last updated 26-Dec-14
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Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness …. A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865)
 
Added on 19-Dec-14 | Last updated 19-Dec-14
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Christianity has probably the most flexible morals of any religion, because Jesus left no code of law behind him like Moses or Muhammad, and his moral precepts are so different from those of ordinary life that no society has ever made any serious attempt to carry them out, such as was possible in the case of Israel and Islam. But every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. This is no doubt an argument for Christianity as against other religions, but not as against none at all, or as against a religion which will frankly admit that its mythology and morals are provisional. That is the only sort of religion that would satisfy the scientific mind, and it is very doubtful whether it could properly be called a religion at all.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
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Added on 12-Dec-14 | Last updated 12-Dec-14
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A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV (1928)

Often only the summary at the end is quoted.
 
Added on 9-Dec-14 | Last updated 9-Dec-14
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Science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe. So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive result that we may constantly expect from the progress of science. The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new. Whether in the end man will survive his ascensions of power we cannot tell. But the problem is no new one. It is the old paradox of freedom re-enacted with mankind for actor and the earth for stage.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
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Added on 5-Dec-14 | Last updated 5-Dec-14
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Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Studies,” Essays, No. 50 (1625)
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Added on 4-Dec-14 | Last updated 25-Mar-22
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There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
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Added on 21-Nov-14 | Last updated 21-Nov-14
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My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
Fact and Faith, Preface (1934)
 
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In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the word “simplest.” It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Science and Theology as Art Forms,” Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927)
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Added on 31-Oct-14 | Last updated 31-Oct-14
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‘Patriotism is not enough.’ But neither is anything else. Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
The Island, “Notes on What’s What” (1962)
 
Added on 22-Oct-14 | Last updated 22-Oct-14
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I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages:
1. This is worthless nonsense,
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view,
3. This is true, but quite unimportant,
4. I always said so.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“The Truth About Death,” Journal of Genetics, Vol. 58, page 464 (1963)
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Review of The Chester Beatty Research Institute Serially Abridged Life Tables, England and Wales, 1841-1960. Referring to the stages a scientific theory goes through.
 
Added on 6-Oct-14 | Last updated 6-Oct-14
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Faith is not fearful of reason; on the contrary, it seeks and trusts reason, since “the light of reason and the light of faith both come from God” and cannot contradict each other.

Francis I (b. 1936) Argentinian Catholic Pope (2013- ) [b. Jorge Mario Bergoglio]
Evangelii Gaudium, sec. 203 (24 Nov 2013)
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Quoted section is Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 7.
 
Added on 10-Sep-14 | Last updated 10-Sep-14
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There is nothing that I tell you with more eager desire that you should believe — nothing with wider ground in my experience for requiring you to believe, than this, that you never will love art well, till you love what she mirrors better.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
Eagle’s Nest, Lecture 3, “Relation of Wise Art to Wise Science,” sec. 41 (15 Sep 1872)
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Added on 1-Sep-14 | Last updated 1-Sep-14
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What do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?

Steven Novella (b. 1964) American clinical neurologist, academic, skeptic
The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe Podcast, #292 (16 Feb 2011)
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Added on 24-Jun-14 | Last updated 24-Jun-14
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We need something larger than ourselves — that’s a real religious activity. That’s what space travel can be — relating ourselves to the universe.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
Interview, Playboy (1996)
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Added on 19-May-14 | Last updated 19-May-14
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The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Strength to Love, ch. 7 “The Man Who Was a Fool,” sec. 3 (1963)
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Added on 25-Apr-14 | Last updated 16-Jan-23
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Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English writer and social critic
Great Expectations, ch 40 (1861)
 
Added on 25-Apr-14 | Last updated 25-Apr-14
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Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
The Demon-Haunted World, ch. 2 (1995)
 
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You get to say the world is flat because we live in a country that guarantees your free speech, but it’s not a country that guarantees that anything you say is correct.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958) American astrophysicist, author, orator
Interview, “The Colbert Report, (10 Mar 2014)
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Added on 21-Mar-14 | Last updated 21-Mar-14
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Science and religion … are two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two, focusing together, reveal the truth.

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) American writer
A Bridge for Passing, ch. 3 (1962)
 
Added on 21-Mar-14 | Last updated 21-Mar-14
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What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders of Giants.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English physicist and mathematician
Letter to Robert Hooke (5 Feb 1676)

In the Gregorian calendar, 15 Feb 1676. See Bernard of Chartres.
 
Added on 3-Mar-14 | Last updated 18-Jun-15
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From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

Jesse Olney (1798-1872) American geographer, educator, politician
In Godwin, The National Preceptor, Lesson 85 “Select Sentences,” rule #19 (1830)
 
Added on 27-Feb-14 | Last updated 27-Feb-14
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I think that in discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian scientist and mathematician
The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies
 
Added on 26-Feb-14 | Last updated 26-Feb-14
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There should be no articles of faith in science, unless it be the faith that no discovery, no law, is so absolute that it cannot be superseded.

Anthony Storr (1920-2001) English psychiatrist and author
Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners and Madmen, ch. 10 (1996)
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Added on 19-Feb-14 | Last updated 11-Feb-21
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I like the scientific spirit — the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine — it always keeps the way beyond open.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet
Remark to the author (4 May 1888), Horace Traubel, Walt Whitman’s Camden Conversations [ed. W. Teller (1973)]
 
Added on 12-Feb-14 | Last updated 12-Feb-14
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Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom. … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

[Prima sapientiae clavis definitur, assidua scilicet seu frequens interrogatio … Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus.]

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) French philosopher, theologian, logician [Pierre Abélard]
Sic et Non, Prolog [tr. Graves (1918)]
 
Added on 11-Feb-14 | Last updated 11-Feb-14
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If you have a good scientific imagination, you can think of all sorts of things that might be true, and that’s the essence of science. You first think of something that might be true — then you look to see if it is, and generally it isn’t.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Interview by Woodrow Wyatt, BBC TV (1959)

Collected in Bertrand Russell's BBC Interviews (1959) [UK] and Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960) [US].
 
Added on 15-Jan-14 | Last updated 9-Aug-23
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And whereas sense and memory are but knowledge of fact, which is a thing past and irrevocable, science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another; by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time: because when we see how anything comes about, upon what causes, and by what manner; when the like causes come into our power, we see how to make it produce the like effects.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher
Leviathan, Part 1, ch. 5 (1651)
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Added on 8-Jan-14 | Last updated 6-Nov-20
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We cannot walk before we toddle,
Though we may toddle far too long,
If we embrace a lovely Model
That is consistent, clear, and wrong.

Kenneth Ewart Boulding (1910-1993) American economist, educator, poet, philosopher
“Experts,” Notes from Woods Hole [unpublished] (1976)
 
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We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than them and things at a greater distance.

Bernard of Chartres (d. after 1124) French philosopher, scholar, administrator. [a.k.a. Bernardus Carnotensis]
(Attributed)

Attributed in John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon, 3.4 (1159). Paraphrase of this original: "Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants." See here for more discussion. See also Isaac Newton.
 
Added on 12-Dec-13 | Last updated 18-Jun-15
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That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-English humanist and mathematician
The Ascent of Man ch. 4 (1973)
 
Added on 20-Nov-13 | Last updated 1-Dec-15
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What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in Politics & Religion have we gone through. The barbarians really flattered themselves they should even be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power & priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise & encourage education, but it was to be vain the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards not forwards for improvement, the President himself declaring in one of his answers to addresses that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This was the real ground of all the attacks on you: those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy, the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well earnt, & well deserved fame.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Joseph Priestley (21 Mar 1801)
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Added on 1-Aug-13 | Last updated 14-Jul-22
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Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge that is power; religion gives man wisdom that is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complimentary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley fo crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Strength to Love, ch. 1 “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” sec. 1 (1963)
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Added on 25-Mar-13 | Last updated 16-Jan-23
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Cosmogony and cosmology have always aroused great interest among peoples and religions. The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven.

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) Polish-born Catholic Pontiff (1978-2005) [b. Karol Józef Wojtyła]
“Cosmology and Fundamental Physics,” Discourse to the Pontifical Academy of Science (3 Oct 1981)
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Added on 14-Feb-13 | Last updated 14-Mar-18
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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
“A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980)
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More on this quotation here and here.
 
Added on 31-Dec-12 | Last updated 26-Oct-21
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Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contemptuous? Certainly. I’ve even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue. Even when it’s applied sensitively, scientific skepticism may come across as arrogant, dogmatic, heartless and dismissive of the feelings and deeply held beliefs of others. And, it must be said, some scientists and dedicated skeptics apply this tool as a blunt instrument, with little finesse. Sometimes it looks as if the skeptical conclusion came first, that contentions were dismissed before, not after, the evidence was examined. All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well based — or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven’t thought of, or demonstrates that we’ve swept key underlying assumptions under the rug — it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
The Demon-Haunted World, ch. 17 (1995)
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Added on 14-Dec-12 | Last updated 27-May-21
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There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness.

George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
State of the Union (8 Jan 1790)
 
Added on 7-Sep-12 | Last updated 28-Jul-15
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Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
(Attributed)

Many variations can be found for this quotation (none of them with citation); the word "Science" and "Physics" are often interchanged:
  • "Science is like sex, it has its practical purposes, but that's not why we do it."
  • "Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not why we are doing it."
  • Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
As noted here, Frank Oppenheimer (a colleague of Feynman's) was quoted saying, "There's a lot of practical fruits to understanding, but it's like sex. There are practical fruits to sex, but nobody would say that's why you do it, normally." Feynman and Oppenheimer may well have collaborated on the general phrasing, or taken it from one another.
 
Added on 30-May-12 | Last updated 10-Jan-20
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To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error. If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,” Unpopular Essays (1950)
 
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I propose good fellowship — good friends all around. No matter what we believe, shake hands and let it go. That is your opinion; this is mine: let us be friends. Science makes friends; religion, superstition, makes enemies. They say: Belief is important. I say: No, actions are important. Judge by deed, not by creed. Good fellowship — good friends — sincere men and women — mutual forbearance, born of mutual respect.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“What Must We Do To Be Saved?” sec. 11 (1880)
    (Source)
 
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Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

[Les miracles sont, selon l’ignorance en quoy nous sommes de la nature, non selon l’estre de la nature.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 23 “On Custom and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law [De la Coustume et de Ne Changer Aisément une Loy Receüe]” (1588-1592) (1.23) (1595) [tr. Lowenthal (1935)]
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The original essay is from 1572; this passage was added in the "C" period, prior to Montaigne's death and the final 1595 edition. The Lowenthal translation is from an edited autobiography, drawing from the Essays and other sources.

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Miracles are according to the ignorance wherein we are by nature, and not according to nature's essence.
[tr. Florio (1603), ch. 22]

Miracles appear such, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according to the real essence of nature.
[tr. Cotton (1686), ch. 22]

Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according to the essence of nature.
[tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877), ch. 22]

Miracles exist from our ignorance of nature, not in nature herself.
[tr. Ives (1925)]

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from the essence of nature.
[tr. Frame (1943)]

Miraculous wonders depend on our ignorance of Nature, not on the essence of Nature.
[tr. Screech (1987)]

 
Added on 24-Oct-11 | Last updated 14-Mar-24
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May it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all.) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which Monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self government. The form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Roger Chew Weightman (24 Jun 1826)
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The last letter he wrote.
 
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If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 8-Jul-11 | Last updated 21-Feb-21
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Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Rambler, #117 (30 Apr 1751)
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Presented as a letter from "Hypertatus"
 
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… [P]riests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to José Corrêa da Serra (11 Apr 1820)
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On resistance, particularly from Presbyterians, to the founding of the University of Virginia.
 
Added on 6-Jun-11 | Last updated 10-Jul-22
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