Aleister Crowley Quotes

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

[I]t is truth alone-scientific, established, proved, and rational truth-which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'-but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest-it is in reason and in science.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.

My position is that we should not succumb to irrational belief.

Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

Generally, TED speakers are believers in the scientific method.

School has no task more important than to teach strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as religion, for instance.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

I believe in things that have proof.

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.