Ben Goldacre Quotes

When you design it, think how you would feel if you had to fly it! Safety first!

Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes - not yet, anyhow.

....a perfect paper airplane.

It's awfully hard to get into the head of a liberal. Instead of logic and reason, they are drawn to emotions and feelings.

Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

We returned home, after these experiments, with the conviction that sailing flight was not the exclusive prerogative of birds.

That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times.

If we teach only the findings and products of science - no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be - without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.

Logic never attracts men to the point of carrying them away.

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end.

"Objective" means that, in a confrontation with the evidence, you would be willing to change your own mind.

It might not be true, but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

When deciding between two competing theories, always go with the one that doesn't involve a magic spell.

Artificial flight may be defined as that form of aviation in which a man flies at will in any direction by means of an apparatus attached to his body, the use of which requires personal skill. Artificial flight by a single individual is the proper beginning for all species of artificial flight, as the necessary conditions can most easily be fulfilled when man flies individually.

I was interested in flying beginning at age 7, when a close family friend took me in his little airplane. And I remember looking at the wheel of the airplane as we rolled down the runway, because I wanted to remember the exact moment that I first went flying... the other thing growing up is that I was always interested in science.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.

Logic is the kingdom of the unexpected. To think logically means to be continually amazed.

My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take use all the way.