Quotes About Truth

Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

What if God is a scientist who regards honest seeking after truth as the supreme virtue?

Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.

There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding: Yeats's 'Winds that blow through the starry ways'.

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.

one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

Religion's power to console doesn't make it true. Even if we make a huge concession; even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God's existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotional well-being; even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst—none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true. It

when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them.

Next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does.

I will not utter falsehoods but I have no objection to making meaningless statements.

Natural selection is a strong enough theory to be predictive in this fashion, now that science no longer needs convincing of its truth.

I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.

In any case, you won't get rich doing science, so why do it at all if you undermine the only point of the enterprise by lying?

its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive him-self'.

If something were to happen that went against our current understanding of reality, scientists would see that as a challenge to our present model, requiring us to abandon or at least change it. It is through such adjustments and subsequent testing that we approach closer and closer to what is true.

The best scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried

Scientific truths are true even if there's nobody around to know about them; were true before humans appeared; will be true after we are extinct.

that childlike inability to distinguish what is true from what we'd like to be true.

when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side.

These beliefs contradict each other, so they can't be all right

I, like you, see through all the smoke and mirrors, but come on, guys, think of the poor dears who can't handle the truth!

Careful inference can be more reliable than 'actual observation', however strongly our intuition protests at admitting it.