Charles Babbage Quotes

Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.

Disagreements are one of the fundamental positive aspects of science.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

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.

When you have a novel, exciting finding, that gets attention. People are going to push back, and that's honestly how science should work.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

One's political views and/or religious beliefs should not exist in an impenetrable and inviolable bubble wherein they are protected from criticism or scrutiny.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

Part of science is the questioning of authority, absolute freedom of ideology. The Soviets did some very good science, but when science ran into ideology, it had trouble. Science flourishes best in a democracy.

I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.

If you disagree with me about a position I have taken, or what I've done, tell me, argue with me, debate. Sometimes, right and good are not that clear; at other times, it is only deliberate and respectful debate that leads us to understand what road we should take.

I will attack ideas very hard. I am not shy about that one bit. So I don't want people to think that because I had a call for civility that that means I shy away from debate and that I'm agreeable. That's not the case. What is the case is that I will not question who you are as a person.

I don't pay attention to critics.

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.

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.

Academic freedom and free speech mean the right to consider ideas with which you might disagree.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

The duty of a philosopher is clear. He must take every pain to ascertain the truth; and, having arrived at a conclusion, he should noise it abroad far and wide, utterly regardless of what opinions he shocks.

I think that the essence of a free and civilized society is that everything in it should be subject to criticism, that all forms of authority, should be treated with a certain reservation.

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.