Richard Dawkins Quotes

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Everything that people say is testable.

You can't prove any hypothesis, you can only improve or disprove it.

In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect.

Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable.

There can be theory but, you know, the problem is you've got to be able to test it. So theories are one thing, testing is another.

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing.

Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.

Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.

One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.

I really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it.

Truth in science is always determined from observational facts.

Measurements, observations, descriptions can only be considered scientific when they are independently confirmed by other people.

Don't confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.

Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.

One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis.

Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.

Science has authority, not because of white coats, or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.