Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

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

The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.

I really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.

In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.

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 think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

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.

I'm not a scientist or a mathematician.

Science is a quest for understanding.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

[One's] inability to invalidate your hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.

Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist.

Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.

[A] theory is a very dangerous thing to have.

There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so'

Everybody has a theory.

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

What can be explained by the assumption of fewer things is vainly explained by the assumption of more things.