Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth.

Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

I am much more interested in defending my ideas than defending my identities.

You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators.

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

[It is] ... a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

What I learned from clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi and for Justice Steven Breyer was that there is no position, regardless of how wrong you think it is, that does not have some arguments in its favor, and you have to find them. And then, no matter how right your own position is, you must look for the weaknesses in that they are always there. You must be willing to find them and possibly change your approach or your mind on the subject.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

If fallacies come knocking at my door,I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score,Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt,And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive,And prove me one too ready to believe,Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

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

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.

If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know. An overwhelming passion for it.” “No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.