Science and Reason

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason.

and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

No great discovery was ever made in science except by one who lifted his nose above the grindstone of details and ventured on a more comprehensive vision.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.

Thinking is the endeavor to capture reality by the means of ideas.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.

A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games; but Vital Economy is the Philosopher Stone.

Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better.

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

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.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.