Lewis D. Eigen Quotes

All true knowledge contradicts common sense.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.

Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.

Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is not true.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

If it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true.

There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.

Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Science when well-digested is nothing but good sense and reason.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.