William C. Clark Quotes

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

A true conservative is on the side of science.

Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

There are no secrets in science.

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Seek truth from facts.

The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.

Clarity and consistency are not enough: the quest for truth requires humility and effort.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.

Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

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 rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.