Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
To defend your major is pretty tough.
No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.
Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.
In any open question, we should argue from what we do know to what we do not know. We do know that fervent legends and stubborn myths arise easily and naturally. We do not know that dead people rise from the grave.
I don't mind anybody coming after me as long as they're coming with facts.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
Just as I wouldn't expect a gynecologist to have a debate with somebody who believes in the Stork-theory of reproduction, I won't do debates with Young Earth creationists.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I began my career as a physicist. And in the White House, my buddies were the people from the White House office of science and technology policy. But a lot of the people were lawyers. They like winning an argument, but science-based, evidence-based reasoning was just sort of not in their framework.
What I look for in any book is an argument, based on evidence, that changes the way I think about something important.
The fact that there's never been a single documented case in the history of this planet of anyone ever contracting HIV in the ring seems to me like a leg perfectly strong enough to stand on in terms of a lawsuit.
Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.
Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.
I don't think any prosecutor should walk into a courtroom and think they're going to wow a jury with catchphrases and cliches and that kind of performance.
We win with facts that are well expressed and frequently communicated; we lose with silence and indifference to the broader social context.
I tell my students, even if you are an opinion journalist, your opinion should be based on facts.
Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man.
Having a Nobel Prize or being a famous scientist will get you a week to a week and a half, metaphorically speaking, of a hearing for your new idea, but after that, it's going to tank if you don't have the evidence and support for it.
A lot of my role is advocacy, and as a scientist, you're an advocate, too, because you are coming up with a theory and having to convince your fellow scientists that you're right.
Anybody can have any opinion they want to, as long as it's an informed opinion.
Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.
Neither table pounding nor dreamy euphoria can be permitted to substitute for plausible argument. If impatience is not to be allowed to short-circuit argument with unsupported assertions, reason must be honored above the crude and noisy enthusiasms and antipathies.
Entertaining these opinions of the course to be pursued, I beg of gentlemen to look at the question, as I have done, in a calm review of facts and of principles.
