Jacob Bronowski Quotes

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

We know nothing. And just because you know something to be true at this moment in your life or you feel that it is true, you can never be sure of yourself.

Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else's is the wrong one.

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

...if the fear of falling into error is the source of a mistrust in Science, which in the absence of any such misgivings gets on with the work itself and actually does know, it is difficult to see why, conversely, a mistrust should not be placed in this mistrust, and why we should not be concerned that this fear of erring is itself the very error.

The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.

Do I know I'm right? Judgements aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe.

Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

Absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error. . . .

Hee stands not surely, that never slips.

Only the real, rare, true scientific minds can endure doubt, which is attached to all our knowledge.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.

William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

In the margin for error lies all our room for maneuver.

Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.

Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion. Opinions are easy to produce, so bad ones abound. Knowing that you don't know something is nearly as valuable as knowing it. The worst situation is thinking you know something when you don't.

Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was the belief in facts.