Lucretius Quotes

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

Embrace truth as it is revealed to-day by human reason.

I would, like any other scientist, willingly change my mind if the evidence led me to do so. So I care about what's true, I care about evidence, I care about evidence as the reason for knowing what is true. It is true that I come across rather passionate sometimes - and that's because I am passionate about the truth... I do get very impatient with humbug, with cant, with fakery, with charlatans.

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

A man ceases to be an honest doubter the moment he refuses one way of getting at the truth because he does not like that way.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us.

The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

Be Skeptical, but learn to listen.

'UFO's' attitude toward the subject is very similar to mine. It's not an advocacy; its philosophy is more 'I want to believe this, but I want it proved.'

I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's quiet.

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators.

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.