Quotes About Rationality

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

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.

The chief danger of adopting a credible pose of irrationality is that to succeed in the pretense you have to be very good. After a while, you get used to it. It becomes pretense no longer.

If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

Perhaps for the first time in any medium, the person teaching you science—Carl Sagan—cared about the tangled mental roadways that can rob a person of rational thought.

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

We must surrender our skepticism only in the face of rock-solid evidence. Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity.

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and—especially important—to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follow from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true

the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new.

Would not a rational society spend more on understanding and preventing, than on preparing for, the next war?

The lure of the marvelous blunts our critical faculties.

Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.

La pseudociencia colma necesidades emocionales poderosas que la ciencia suele dejar insatisfechas

Bilimi (daha doÄŸrusu iÅŸleyiÅŸ ilkelerini) hiç duymad?ysan?z, sahte bilime kucak açt???n?z?n fark?nda bile olmayabilirsiniz.

Our psychological predispositions pros or cons must not misleads us. All that matters is the evidence, and the evident is not in.

Una señal inequívoca del amor a la verdad —escribía John Locke en 1690—, es no mantener ninguna proposición con mayor seguridad de la que garantizan las pruebas en las que se basa.» En el tema de los ovnis, ¿cuál es la fuerza de las pruebas?

Science may have evicted ghosts and witches from our beliefs

A credulous mind Ã¢â'¬Â¦ finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.

Being freed from superstition isn't enough for science to grow. One must also have the idea of interrogating Nature, of doing experiments.

La búsqueda de configuraciones sin análisis crítico y la ostentación de un rígido escepticismo sin la búsqueda de configuraciones son las antípodas de una ciencia incompleta. La búsqueda efectiva del saber requiere la concurrencia de ambas funciones.

This is one of the fallacies in the baloney detection kit, the enumeration of favorable circumstances. We

la ciencia es más que un cuerpo de conocimiento, es una manera de pensar.

Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.