Paul Feyerabend Quotes

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

Progress includes Order, but Order does not include Progress.

The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike.

I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did.

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

There is so much more information about the scientific world than there was a generation ago that we have all increased our opportunities for ignorance. There are more things not to know. ... The machinery that we deal with is so much more complex that it is possible to become dysfunctional at a much higher level of performance.

In order to grow, you must accept new responsibilities, no matter how uncertain you may feel or how unprepared you are to deal with them.

How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter?

I think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons of the present thought so many important things were superstitious.

There is no knowledge and science like pondering and thought; and there is no prosperity and advancement like knowledge and science.

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...

Science is the only savior.

Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding.

I disagree that we need to contemplate eliminating ourselves in order to move forward. Sure, I think a good dystopian story can serve to steer us on the right path toward a better world. But we also need stories that offer solutions to our problems that are realistic, and workable today.

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.

Tolerance of diversity is imperative, because without it, life would lose its savor. Progress in the arts, in the sciences, in the patterns of social adjustment springs from diversity and depends upon a tolerance of individual deviations from conventional ways and attitudes.

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.

Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.

In order to make room for the new (whether it's new clothes or new thoughts and ideas), we must release the old and the outworn.

If we would serve science, we must extend her limits, not only as far as our own knowledge is concerned, but in the estimation of others.

Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.