Hippolyte Taine Quotes

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.'

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method.

If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist.

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

The thing about science is that it's an accurate picture of the world.

Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

We should follow the facts wherever they lead us.

Everything has a cause.

We are going to follow wherever the facts lead us.

Learn, compare, collect the facts!

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.

Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time

It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly.

I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts.

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.

School yourself to demureness and patience. Learn to inure yourself to drudgery in science. Learn, compare, collect the facts.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.

The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

The finer is always the cause, the grosser the effect. So the external world is the effect, the internal the cause.