Allen Tate Quotes

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

Science, logic, and truth should not be partisan issues; they are the cornerstones of fields that have made the United States a leader in innovation and a better place for everyone to live.

Science is simply a powerful way of understanding what's real and what isn't, what's true and what's not. It can help us determine what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under what circumstances.

Some things tend not to work so well for science - things that rely on substantial written contributions by key experts are a case in point - but even there I tend to keep an open mind, because it may just be a case of finding the right formula.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

Science is not, despite how it is often portrayed, about absolute truths. It is about developing an understanding of the world, making predictions, and then testing these predictions.

I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.

Sound science must be our guide in choosing which problems to tackle and how to approach them.

Who doesn't love the parables? You know there's a solution, but you have to do some work to find it.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

Science has changed the face of this earth: it has harnessed the forces of Nature -- forces whose secret laws it had first to discover -- it has created practically a new world within the memory of men living….Science -- the scientists -- doesn't pretend to have grasped in its fingers the Eternal Truth …Science doesn't demand that one believe or be damned. Science reasons. Science investigates. Science tests itself….Science works -- builds -- quietly prevails -- promises little and performs much.

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.

… new concepts arise from experiments and observations, and … the new concepts in turn lead to further experiments and observations.

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked 'why.'

I am never satisfied until I can make a mathematical model of what I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand. If I cannot, I do not understand.

Appreciating complexity while searching through its thickets to find essential factors leads to understanding.

Analysis I take to be a scientific procedure. What I do is creative. It doesn't spring from the same part of the mind.