Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

Science has changed the face of this earth: it has harnessed the forces of Nature -- forces whose secret laws it had first to discover -- it has created practically a new world within the memory of men living….Science -- the scientists -- doesn't pretend to have grasped in its fingers the Eternal Truth …Science doesn't demand that one believe or be damned. Science reasons. Science investigates. Science tests itself….Science works -- builds -- quietly prevails -- promises little and performs much.

Modern science's defense against self-delusion relies upon a spirit of open and critical inquiry. This, though hardly infallible, ostensibly uncovers errors and thereby proceeds towards objective truth

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

The common aim of all science is the gradual removal of prejudice.

Science is for anyone who wants to explore their world and understand things.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?" Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.

Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

It is in the best interests of civilization and our economy and our nation to understand what objective truths are as revealed by the methods and tools of science.

Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world.

The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they are.

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.

Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.