W. Edwards Deming Quotes

To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. ... Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.

My background is basically scientific math. My Dad was a physicist, so I have it in my blood somewhere. Scientific method is very important to me. I think anything that contradicts it is probably not true.

I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

Reason and science allow us to properly think about the necessary data that are required in order to answer a given question. This is precisely why the scientific method is the most powerful framework for understanding the world.

Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

It is the theory which decides what we can observe

Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.

No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.

Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.

On any occasion when one can discover the cause of events, one should not resort to the gods.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.

The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.

Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.

For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.

The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

GUIL: A scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.