Max Weber Quotes

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

It is clear that I am a person who believes fundamentally in facts, evidence, data, and science, which supports decision-making and allows us to function as a society based on knowledge.

When deciding between two competing theories, always go with the one that doesn't involve a magic spell.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

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

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

Science does not permit exceptions.

I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science. All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.

Most importantly, I agree that the truth of these matters should be determined by interpretation of scientific evidence - experiments, fossil studies and the like.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

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

Scientists have a tendency to believe in absolutes, in studies and the repeating of them. Psychoanalysis is firmly based in subjective accounts. We need both.

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.

As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data.

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

You can't manage science.... There are some things that you have to do based on the facts regardless of your ideology.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is my job, my responsibility, as an astronomer to remind people that alien hypotheses should always be a last resort.

Disregard belief systems that aren't based on empirical studies.

Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.

[Children] are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.

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

Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'

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.

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind