Nicholas Stern Quotes

We need a world where the values of science are celebrated: free inquiry, free speech and a healthy skepticism, all coupled with a sense of wonder, a respect for truth and an ability to reason.

Liberty is about the right to question everything.

That kind of skeptical, questioning, "don't accept what authority tells you" attitude of science - is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Liberty is about our rights to question everything.

The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?

If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.

If our hard-earned liberty, our desire to be irreverent of the old and to question the new, can be reduced to one, basic and indispensable right, it must be the right to free speech.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew. To say you've got to inquire, you've got to be testing your knowledge all the time in order to be more effective in what you're doing.

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.

We are in a democratic society. It's our job to question.

I discovered how science is truly a universal language, one that forges new connections among individuals and opens the mind to ideas that go far beyond the classroom.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward truth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions.

And if that's what the American people want, then that's what the policy should be, of course. But the idea that anything in the United States is too sensitive to discuss or too dangerous to discuss is really, I think, absurd.

The time has passed in the history of the world when anything is too sacred to be touched, when anything is beyond the reach of the inquiring and scientific spear.

Socrates was executed … not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

Our [politicians] responsibility is to be sure that we utilize the best science.

Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men.

I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position [creationism], it's their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant

True science teaches, above all, to doubt