Joshua Reynolds Quotes

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.

The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science.

I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it. The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.

Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer's approach to problem-solving.

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

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.

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

I possess a strong sense of reason.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.

Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

The problem with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds.

Scientists and academics in particular focus on detail and the minutiae. When they talk to each other, they usually don't focus on the broad ideas; they don't focus on social interconnectedness. They focus on the task that they're doing.

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

Today, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly.

But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

With acknowledgement of residues, we can be more easily prepared to grant the unit of science, the overlapping of disciplines, and the total coherence of all facts.