Intellectual Honesty Quotes

No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What do you do, Sir?

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.

I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.

When the facts change, you change your mind. I know that is a hard concept for people to get sometimes.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

[It is] ... a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them...

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

No wise man has called a change of opinion in constancy.

We have to move toward specificity, intelligence, facts, proof, and mutual affection. What I think people have to do now is be very, very assertive about the utter essentiality of intellectual undertakings.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them – acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't even wish to be, and don't even wish to taken for being.

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I've reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life

I will adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

Neither truth, reason, nor justice consists in stubbornness of assertion, nor in the repetition of error.

Without intellectual honesty, you can't have a culture that's willing to tolerate failure because people cling too much to an idea that likely will be bad or isn't working and they feel like their reputation is tied up in it. They can't admit failure.

I'm not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Learning to exist in a world quite different from that which formed you is the condition, these days, of pursuing research you can on balance believe in and write sentences you can more or less live with.