Jimmy Wales Quotes

Anything that makes us take more seriously scientists - or economists or chemists or physicists or biologists - I think is helpful in times when things get distorted because of people not paying attention to all the facts.

We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts.

As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.

When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.

The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.

In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.

If it looks like a Dwarf, and it smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf or a latrine wearing dungerees.

The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!

Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

[The Royal Society] is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists - Robert Winston, for instance - who are also men of faith.

But however mysterious is nature , however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science , the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.

PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method . . . of obtaining money by false pretences [by] "reading character" in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false. . . for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe."

Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.

If you live in a world where the population is separating itself from science and entering an age of superstition, as a marketer, selling to people who will believe anything, it is a golden age.

Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain?

Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.

To an extent that undermines classical standards of science, some purported scientific results concerning 'HIV' and 'AIDS' have been handled by press releases, by disinformation, by low-quality studies, and by some suppression of information, manipulating the media and people at large. When the official scientific press does not report correctly, or obstructs views dissenting from those of the scientific establishment, it loses credibility and leaves no alternative but to find information elsewhere.

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets.

If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.

Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Darwinian evolution may be the most truthful and powerful idea ever generated by Western Science, but if we continue to illustrate our conviction with an indefensible, unsupported, entirely speculative, and basically rather silly story, then we are clothing a thing of beauty in rags - and we should be ashamed, "for the apparel oft proclaims the man.

I don't like people that make their living talking about bullshit, and you see them in many shows that are made on the same subject. When you go looking at UFOs or bigfoot or what-have-you, there's just nothing there.