Agnes Repplier Quotes

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

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.

I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What do you do, Sir?

I realized there are no lobbyists for critical thinking, and I realized there are no lobbyists for bravery.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.

If something is wrong, it'll prove to be wrong in the wash, and if it's right, you don't want to not expose yourself to it - so I read everything, no matter how horrible it gets. You listen and take it in and if it doesn't sway you, you'll know you considered it.

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.

I like to regard myself as someone who's capable of critical thought, that is to say, who can evaluate claims.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions.

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

"Relevance" may not be best.... Impetuous action, conscious oversimplification, refusal to doubt, and the rejection of reason are enemies of the university.

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.