About the same time I had opened my browser window a week ago for this post on Bertrand Russell’s Liberal Decalogue from 1951, I had opened a page at The Inconvenient Truth by Guy McCardle on quotes that represent the very best aspects of skepticsim. It has taken me this long to get back to it.
This one in particular, strikes me as highly prescient:
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone. – Denis Diderot
The short version takeaway is:
Skepticism is the first step toward truth –Denis Diderot
Given what we’ve seen in professional climate circles these past two weeks, I think that makes a great motto. Here’s the rest.
Since these are public domain quotes from multiple people, I’ve reproduced it in entirety here. Please give props to Guy McCardle at The Inconvenient Truth for collecting them.
Critical Thinking
Skepticism is the first step toward truth. –Denis Diderot
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. – John Maynard Keynes
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. –William Drummond
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. — Albert Einstein
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. –Philip K. Dick
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone. – Denis Diderot
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. – Martin Luther King Jr
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. –Richard Feynman
A scientist seeks the truth, wherever that may lead. A believer already knows the truth, and cannot be swayed no matter how compelling the evidence. – Author Unknown
But what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away. – McDonald/Loggins
Ridicule may lawfully be employed where reason has no hope of success . –Ed Brayton
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. –Anatole France
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. – Jacob Bronowski
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. – Voltaire
It is impossible to reason someone out of something that he did not reason himself into in the first place. – Jonathon Swift
Doubt grows with knowledge. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. – Galileo Galilei
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. – James Thurber
That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. –P. C. Hodgell
It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers. –James Thurber
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. –Bertrand Russell
The curse of man, and cause of nearly all of his woes, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible. –H. L. Mencken
The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away. Don’t waste any neurons on what doesn’t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor. – Carl Sagan
For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities. –Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous. –Confucius
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. – Bertrand Russell
Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow’s too lazy to form an opinion. –Will Rogers
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. – Bertrand Russell
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true;it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. –H. L. Mencken
Evidence
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and giving to them only that degree of credibility which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure the world from most of the ills from which it is suffering. –Bertrand Russell
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. – Carl Sagan
In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. –Stephen Jay Gould
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence . –Christopher Hitchens
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. –Aldous Huxley
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? – John Maynard Keynes
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. –John Maynard Keynes
The correct scientific response to something that is not understood must always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause. – David Attenborough
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. –W.K. Clifford
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true. –Bertrand Russell
Not until the empirical results are exhausted need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation . –Edwin Hubble
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. – David Hume
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. – David Hume
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. –David Hume
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. – Charles Babbage
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. –Francis Bacon
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion. – Stephen Jay Gould
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. – John Burroughs
When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. –James Whitcomb Riley
The better a man knows the truth, the less he is likely to condemn. – Sebastian Castellio
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. –John von Neumann
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – Bertrand Russell
On Sciences
Science is organized knowledge. – Herbert Spencer
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true. – Carl Sagan
Truth in science can best be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one. – Konrad Lorenz
[Science is] a series of judgements, revised without ceasing. –Pierre Emile Duclaux
Science is nothing but trained and organised 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. –Thomas Henry Huxley
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant. –Miguel de Unamuno
[Science is] the desire to know causes. –William Hazlitt
[Science is] the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another. –Thomas Hobbes
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. –Konrad Lorenz
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. – Hippocrates
The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. –Thomas Henry Huxley
Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world. – Richard Dawkins
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions. –Claude Levi-Strauss
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t. – Pete Seeger
Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. –Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. –Albert Einstein
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. –Adam Smith
The compass that today guides this timeless endeavor is scientific inquiry. It is science that gazes outward, providing the grand questions that challenge us to journey farther and farther from home. But it is also science that peers inward, exploring previously inaccessible areas of the Earth, and asking the practical questions that help us to make Earth safer, protect our citizens, and expand our economy. –NASA Roadmap “Exploring our Planet for the Benefit of Society”, 2005
Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is superstition. –Robert Park
Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise. –Ivan Pavlov
Thought-provocation
So you’re offended. So fucking what? – Stephen Fry (talking about religious objections to free speech)
Never argue with an idiot. The best outcome you can hope for is that you won an argument with an idiot. –Anonymous
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief . –Gerry Spence
In the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy. – Carl Sagan
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. – Voltaire
Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for – because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything. – Peter Marshall
Whoever is still seeking for miracles so that he may believe is himself a wonder, who does not believe while the world around him does . –Saint Augustine
If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much. –Yogi Berra
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. –Thomas Henry Huxley
Faith is believing what you know ain’t so. – Mark Twain
The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of “Spiritualism” is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a “medium” hired at a guinea a séance. – Aldous Huxley
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. – Oscar Wilde
When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff . –Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. – Eric Hoffer
There’s a sucker born every minute. – Joseph Bessimer (not Phineas T. Barnum)
Heathen, n: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. –Ambrose Bierce
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. –John Kenneth Galbraith
It is harder to conceal ignorance than to acquire knowledge. – Arnold Glasgow
Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. –Winston Churchill
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. –Thomas Carlyle
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity . –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth. –Edwin Hubbell Chapin
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. –Winston Churchill
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Faith” is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see - But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency. –Emily Dickinson
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures but with experiments and demonstrations. –Galileo Galilei
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. –Dalai Lama
A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. – Robin G. Collingwood
Other
Heaven wheels above you displaying to you her eternal glories and still your eyes are on the ground. – Dante Alighieri
We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity. –Marie Curie
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religions. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough. –Aldous Huxley
Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs. –Anonymous
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature. –Jacob Bronowski
Truth exists. Only lies are invented. –Georges Braque
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. Marie Curie
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. No, not Thomas Jefferson – it was John Philpot Curran
The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition . –Quintus Curtius Rufus
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity. – Robertson Davies
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. –John Dewey
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it. –Emily Dickinson
Men talk of heaven, – there is no heaven but here; Men talk of hell, – there is no hell but here; Men of hereafters talk, and future lives, - O love, there is no other life – but here. – Omar Khayyám
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. –Denis Diderot
I would like to be remembered as a person who made trouble where trouble was needed. – Studs Terkel
I have always observed that when people are interrupted in the performance of some egregious stupidity their feelings are hurt. – Anthony Trollope
We are all born ignorant, but we must work hard to remain stupid. – Benjamin Franklin
Four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense, ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, iii) this is true, but quite unimportant, iv) I always said so. –J.B.S. Haldane
A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth. – Henrik Ibsen
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. –Thomas Jefferson
The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract. –Oliver Wendell Holmes
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible positions. – Thomas Jefferson
Morality & Ethics
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant. –H. L. Mencken
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life, so aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. –Henry David Thoreau
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. – Dante Alighieri
There are causes worth dying for but none worth killing for. – Albert Camus
The time is always right to do what is right. – Martin Luther King Jr
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another. – J. William Fullbright
Prejudice is opinion without judgment . –Voltaire
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. –Abbie Hoffman
Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself. – Robert Ingersoll
There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people. –Thomas Jefferson
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. – Ashley Montague
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. –Thomas Jefferson
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too . –Voltaire
All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing in a biography of Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities . –Voltaire
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society. –Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prejudices are what fools use for reason . –Voltaire
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. –Karl Popper
Alternative Medicine
Penicillin cures pneumonia even if you’re in a coma, but alternative medicine only seems to work when you are awake. – R. Barker Bausell
I suffered from chronic hypochondria for years. Eventually I went to a naturopath and was cured with a course of broad-spectrum placebos . –M. Cullen
There must be some limit to the thing. It cannot go on to infinity. (Es muss ein Ende geben, es kann nicht bis ins Unendliche weitergehen). – Samuel Hahnemann (to Dr Schreter, Sept 13th 1829, Writing about Homeopathic Dilutions)
The orthodox doctor treats what you have, and the alternative practitioner says you have what she treats. – Rose Shapiro
A climate scientist uses statistics like a drunk uses a light post. For support rather than illumination.
A couple more quotes:
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
~Albert Einstein
“Scientists have been trained with grant funds the way Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits.”
~A former NASA scientist [OKM]
“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
~H.L.Mencken
Smokey says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:11 pm
A couple more quotes: …..
It seems there is a phenomenon here and there that people are doubtful on quotes of authorities, but in the same time hidden fans of the quotes. Hidden, because there is very few until no discussion about the truth of the quotes, and doubtful because there are no own given readable arguments on the quotes.
That this is a serious problem one can recognize because the quote “I know one thing, that I know nothing” granted to Socrates is repeated many times without any critique; but logic tells us that this sentence contains a contradiction; if one really know nothing, then he or she cannot state that he or she know one thing. But reading Plato online there are more origin quotes without contradictions.
Parallel to that phenomenon the mind war on the battle field of global warming seems to have shifted from science which includes philosophy (and logic) to that what Schopenhauer has called The Art Of Controversy. It seems to me that this shift from philosophy and especially scepticism has its cause in confusion about the nature of scepticism developed since the Age Of Enlightenment; it was the exercise to reject all nonphysical nature by the science community because of the bad experiences with the authorities from the church. But as one can see today, philosophy inclusive logic has no importance in arguing bias text’s powered by money and the science of corruption.
I think to analyse (equal to critique) by logic, such Socrates quote, is not a method of scepticism, because there is no rejection per se, but reasons in valid arguments. This means that it is not enough only to be sceptic to the unknown (and not sceptic to the own claims), it is always necessary to argue on the object. This can be done using quotes – wherein the argument has a meaning but not the quoted authority – but the point is, that the actual saying person is responsible for the statement; there is no virtual court to judge who directs with a finger to a supposed enemy, while the judge is untouchable. It is a nonlinearity and violates the truth in logic. Nevertheless this nonlinearity is used well as weapon the climate war; valid arguments seems to disturb the holy war.
Regarding a motto for our times I like the famous fallacies containing humour like the last words of a parents murderer, when he is arguing that he must not punished because he is already punished enough to be an orphan. Learning why fallacies are fallacies it helps to discriminate false from true, but also absurd talk from valid arguments. There was a motto “No time to lose” in the Monty Python ‘Kamikaze Scotsmen’ sketch, including the “No time to lose clinic” and the absurd shift of the motto to „No time Toulouse“ (!).
If the term sceptic is meant as critique (from the origin of an analyse of the object) I agree with that this can be a step to the recognition of truth, but this has to be done with own arguments; a confessor of scepticisms does nothing.
V.