Bertrand Russell Quotes

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

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.

Conservatives need to go where the facts, not ideology, take them.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.

Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

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.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

Seek truth from facts.

Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

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.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

Something my father dearly loved is the scientific method, and it's founded in this element of humility. The idea is that you pursue the truth wherever it goes; you need to evidence, and you can - you see if it's repeatable.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth - hear both sides and believe neither.

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

We have the right to our own opinions, but not our own facts.