Tim Minchin Quotes

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'

It is in the best interests of civilization and our economy and our nation to understand what objective truths are as revealed by the methods and tools of science.

I believe science has a wonderful ability, in an unbiased way, to offer hope to many people who are confused, but it's not the only way to find hope.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.

It would be superfluous to receive by faith, things that can be known by natural reason

Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it's there it doesn't require your belief- and if it's not there why should you believe in it?

The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

I believe in things that have proof.

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.