Nick Sagan Quotes

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Science is a wonderful way of getting out what's real.

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

Scientists are always skeptics.

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

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

Science is simply a powerful way of understanding what's real and what isn't, what's true and what's not. It can help us determine what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under what circumstances.

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

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

Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.

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.

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

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth.

I'm first and foremost a scientist.

Educated guesswork' is what science is. You form hypotheses, test them against the evidence, and if they fit the evidence, you can assume you've got close to the truth.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

[Science is] the literature of truth.

Science is about applying what we know and asking what we don't know.

It would be difficult to discover the truth about the universe if we refused to consider anything that might be true.