Ernst Mach Quotes

Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

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

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

If you're a real scientist, you're constantly open to new data. Nothing is ever 100% validated.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

Science is the most complete presentment of facts with the least expenditure of thought

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

What intrigues basic scientists like me is that anytime we do a series of experiments, there are going to be three or four new questions that come up when you think you've answered one.

When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong.

If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.

Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.

Scientists are always skeptics.

Experience by itself is not science.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: 'Show me the data.'