Michael Crichton Quotes

There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.

Some matters are simply contentious. Sometimes you're never going to get it right.

Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement, but also contains areas of controversy. That's inescapable.

If we had a consensus we wouldn't have to go to a referendum.

Why argue about things you can't prove?

No one is served by continued uncertainty and fractious debate.

I may not be smart enough to debate you point-for-point on this, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

Some say no when others say yes. That's the difficulty with handball.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

When I was doing Professor Albert Einstein's bust he had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned his theory of relativity in a book. 'Were I wrong,' he said, 'one professor would have been enough.

A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically.

Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.

Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.

If you're not arguing, your coalition isn't wide enough.

Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.

If people don’t have an understanding of what science is and what scientists do, then they can tend to think that global warming, for example, is just a matter of opinion.

I understand that people have a critical mind towards my position. And receive a lot of confusion too.

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