Brian Cox Quotes

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

I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.'

Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.

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

Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

I'm not a religious man... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).

Everything that people say is testable.

Religion can have psychological and social roles, but in terms of really explaining how things work, science works differently. Science is based on material elements at the core.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

I do not want chemistry to degenerate into a religion; I do not want the chemist to believe in the existence of atoms as the Christian believes in the existence of Christ in the communion wafer.

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

Science is constantly proved all the time. If we take something like any fiction, any holy book, and destroyed it, in a thousand years' time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they'd all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.