Andre Malraux Quotes

Science robs men of wisdom and usually converts them into phantom beings loaded up with facts.

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes.

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled.

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason.

A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.

Even if I stumble on to the absolute truth of any aspect of the universe, I will not realise my luck and instead will spend my life trying to find flaws in this understanding - such is the role of a scientist.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

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.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.