Quotes About Certainty

Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science.

There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to one.

In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.

No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

To succeed in science, one must doubt; to succeed in life, one must be sure.

Moral certainty is never more than probability.

Proof' is the hallmark of religion.

I have learned to have more faith in the scientist than he does in himself.

Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.

Science rejects the indeterminate.

Authority. The antithesis of science.

But science perhaps is very difficult without faith. Also there is no simple way of saying now we have science, we don't need faith anymore.

Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.

In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth.

Why are you so sure parallel lines exist? Believe nothing, merely because you have been told it, or because it is traditional, or because you have imagined it.

Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

A fundie claimed "God invented science". All of science is tentative and approximate, also sometimes mistaken. Is that the best God can do?

Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

The alternative to doubt is authority, against which science had fought for centuries.