Paul Feyerabend Quotes

Early on, when you're working in a new area of science, you have to think about all the pitfalls and things that could lead you to believe that you had done something when you hadn't, and, even worse, leading others to believe it.

The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it....we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.

It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)

The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.

So Marxism, Freudianism: any one of these things I think is an irrational cult. They're theology, so they're whatever you think of theology; I don't think much of it. In fact, in my view that's exactly the right analogy: notions like Marxism and Freudianism belong to the history of organized religion.

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. It differs, however, from most other branches of human activity in that not only are the pathways of scientific thought determined by the presuppositions of the scientists but their goals are the testing and revision of old presuppositions and the creation of new.

The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history.

Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.

There are three sides to every coin (Heads, Tails, and The Edge). Your ability to understand contrasting points of view and your ability to glean what information you believe to be valuable from each side is a crucial skill.

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."

Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

We have this huge, massive information, but what is it that matters? What doesn't matter? What makes sense, what doesn't make sense? You have to have a framework for understanding and of interpretation in order to make use of the information.

Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

By the end of the book, it is quite different than the way you thought it would be when you started the book - both in form and what it contains and what you think. Well, you tipped in a lot and you digested a lot - it wasn't pre-digested in your view. And it changed what you thought and how you see things.

Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

I Use The Square To Begin My Solutions Because The Square Is A Non-choice, Really. In The Course Of Development, I Search For The Forces That Would Disprove The Square.

It is however pretty evident, on general principles, that in devising for mathematical truths a new form in which to record and throw themselves out for actual use, views are likely to be induced, which should again react on the more theoretical phase of the subject.

I am a very curious person; I'll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.

What's the point in having a mind if you don't use it to make judgements?

He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants everyone to use what sense they have.

The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.