Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen! If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

In science, nothing is ever 100% proven.

In science, "fact" can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.

'Incontrovertible' is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science.

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

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Whether that coherence obtains universally is a question that need not be answered here since only those parts where the coherence has actually been found become part of Science.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

There's no reason to be agnostic about ideas that are dramatically incompatible with everything we know about modern science.

Science is constantly proved all the time. If we take something like any fiction, any holy book, and destroyed it, in a thousand years' time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they'd all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.

It really does not matter whether one believes a mystical entity created the universe 5,000 or 10,000 million years ago - both are equally irrational, unsubstantiated claims of no fundamental validity.

I think science is real.

It is in the best interests of civilization and our economy and our nation to understand what objective truths are as revealed by the methods and tools of science.

There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.

For scientists, reality is not optional.

It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

Science demands objective factual evidence - proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false.

Science "says" nothing. People say things and knowledge changes.

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.