Stephen Hawking Quotes

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

[I]t is truth alone-scientific, established, proved, and rational truth-which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakened minds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, 'faith governs the world,'-but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or in the priest-it is in reason and in science.

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

Science is the only true guide in life.

Science and reason liberate us from the shackles of superstition by offering us a framework for understanding our shared humanity. Ultimately, we all have the capacity to treasure life and enrich the world in incalculable ways.

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

I'm not a religious man... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

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

Experience by itself is not science.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

I'm a firm believer in science.

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.