Max Lerner Quotes

I object to a legal approach when settling questions of science or scientific behavior.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral.

The common aim of all science is the gradual removal of prejudice.

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.

There is no room for political, personal or religious ideologies in science.

Our public schools arbitrarily define science as explaining the world by natural processes alone. In essence, a religion of naturalism is being imposed on millions of students. They need to be taught the real nature of science, including its limitations.

I really believe in science. It is a faith. It is a reverence akin to religion. But as we always say, it's different from religion in that, as near as we can tell, it exists outside of us. It has an objective quality, the process of science.

The best scientists that I've met are those that are humanists and scientists at the same time.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

There is nothing inherently wrong about science.

Of course, Einstein was a very great scientist indeed, and I have enormous respect for him, and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity of the physical world.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.

Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth.

I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.

Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

Modern science rests on a universality that transcends ethnic, racial, and religious frameworks.

But whereas skepticism and uncertainty have always been the heart and soul of science, confidence and certainty are the coin of the realm in much of today’s public discourse. Unquestioning confidence is deeply troubling for the scientific community because it is not the currency we trade in, and it has led people in America and around the world to question scientific enterprise itself. We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

I love science and that time in history when science and the humanities were the same thing.

I'm comfortable reading science and dissecting it and discerning the difference between junk science and real science.

Ultimately, bridging the practice of forensic science and the public's need for story may be difficult. We crave narrative, order from chaos, a mystery solved, good guys winning out over the bad ones. But science, and forensic science, should be more neutral and, thus, more nuanced.

There is not wrong, there is no right, and I will sleep very well tonight.

Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?

Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West.