Francis Collins Quotes

We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right.

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.

I like reading things where someone's looked at what I do with some honesty, and maybe been challenged by it, and they have something to say that shows they've thought about it, even if they don't necessarily like it.

If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.

It's important to have people who will question you occasionally.

We cannot be so scared that our ideas or opinions will not survive being tested. If you are afraid of being wrong, then you might not have a good argument.

That's healthy and good for us that there are people who are prepared to question what we are doing.

I think it's interesting to me to talk to people who don't agree with me all the time.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

Look at the evidence and to be willing to question your own truths, and to be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody that whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be.

I decided to get to know my opponents and their arguments.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

Good-faith re-examination of a position you've held in the past should be seen as a virtue, not a vice.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.

Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas, both our own and those of others, and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.

I don't mind anybody coming after me as long as they're coming with facts.

It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

People learn the most about themselves by confronting those with whom they deeply disagree..

One may criticize even what one reveres.

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

Somewhere in this we got into impugning people's character and motives if we didn't like their ideas. We gotta get back to just debating ideas.

We should not seek to tune out the realists' whines or taunts, as they may provide good instruction.