P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

We need to be pro-science; we have to go back to science.

Science has become something that everybody knows he has to pay attention to, but not everybody is a believer. So I don't think we should equate science with religion. But, that science is progressively playing a more and more important part in the life of every individual is obvious.

Science rules!

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

Scientists don't read theology; they don't read philosophy. It doesn't make any difference to what they're doing - for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it's true.

We should not be a party that is opposed to science.

Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

When people use the word 'science,' it's often a tell, like in poker, that you're bluffing.

Science is organized knowledge.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work.

I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

To the scientist, failure to flip-flop in the face of contradictory evidence is irrational and dangerous behavior. And scientists will often flip-flop at almost light speed. Often it takes only a single observation to flip-flop thousands of scientifically learned people.

I'm a firm believer in science.

The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.