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There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.
Sep 17, 2025
The universe is wider than our views of it.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.
Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries.
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars.
When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
The farther the experiment is from theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
Biologists can be just as sensitive to heresy as theologians.
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.
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.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.
Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God
Advances are Made by Answering Questions. Discoveries are Made by Questioning Answers.
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
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