Neal Stephenson Quotes

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Why understand when you can believe?

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.

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

Thou shalt not believe something just because you can explain it.

Science is a way of thinking that helps you not to fool yourself.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

My position is that we should not succumb to irrational belief.

There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand.

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

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

Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.

I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.

A healthy skepticism, regularly exercised…

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

We need to take a step back and realize that not everything we encounter is true. You don't want to be gullibly accepting everything as true, but you don't want to be cynically rejecting everything as false. You want to take your time to evaluate the information.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I'm just a cold-blooded investigator.

Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.

Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.