Brian Schmidt Quotes

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.

As scientists, we need to not be afraid of the truth.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it. It is civilizing because it puts truth ahead of all else, including personal interests.

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

Understanding truth is the primary objective of science, not doing good for the world.

Science has not been successful by making up explanations of things that fit with the current social fabric.

When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

The bedrock of science is the unwillingness to accept authority.

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not like drama critics, determining flops and successes. Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they're wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory. Along with the advocacy principle of the courtroom, It is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

It would be difficult to discover the truth about the universe if we refused to consider anything that might be true.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

I don't think the scientific method and the science fictional method are really analogous. The thing about them is that neither is really practiced very much, at least not consciously. But the fact that they are methodical does relate them.

The real community of man is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

You learn that the interest is in what you don't yet know and that theories evolve. But we nonetheless have progress and improved knowledge over time.

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.