Richard Dawkins Quotes

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

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

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myth.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

Science does not permit exceptions.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

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

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

Experience by itself is not science.

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.

Science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea’s worth

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

Educated guesswork' is what science is. You form hypotheses, test them against the evidence, and if they fit the evidence, you can assume you've got close to the truth.

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.