Quote from Clive James

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BBC - Magazine Monitor (periodical)

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Sceptics, say the believers, don't care about the future of the human race. But being sceptical has always been one of the best ways of caring about the future of the human race. For example, it was from scepticism that modern medicine emerged, questioning the common belief that diseases were caused by magic, or could be cured by it.

—Clive James (23/10/2009)
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

—Thomas Huxley
But I try not to think with my gut. Really it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

—Carl Sagan
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

—Niels Bohr (1920)
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.

—Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

—Stephen Jay Gould (1981)
Two different theories exist concerning the origin of children: the theory of sexual reproduction, and the theory of the stork. Many people believe in the theory of sexual reproduction because they have been taught this theory at school. In reality, however, many of the world's leading scientists are in favor of the theory of the stork. If the theory of sexual reproduction is taught in schools, it must only be taught as a theory and not as the truth. Alternative theories, such as the theory of the stork, must also be taught.

Evidence supporting the theory of the stork includes the following:

1. It is a scientifically established fact that the stork does exist. This can be confirmed by every ornithologist.

2. The alleged human fetal development contains several features that the theory of sexual reproduction is unable to explain.

—Institute for Stork Research and Science
Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations. It takes effort to rise above this tendency, to step back from our beliefs and our emotional connection to conclusions and focus on the process. The process (i.e science, logic, and intellectual rigor) has to be more important than the belief.

—Steven Novella (01/12/2009)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'

—Isaac Asimov
Consensus is not a fact-based exercise.

—Bad Religion
The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

—Thomas Henry Huxley
There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

—Richard Dawkins
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

—John Adams
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

—Aldous Huxley
If what I say is wrong (because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence), then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, it is your problem.

—Satoshi Kanazawa
The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.

—Werner Heisenberg
...that kind of skeptical questioning, don't accept what authority tells you -attitude of science- is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

—Carl Sagan (03/05/1996)
There is a social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. This social axiom is that we ought to act in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so.

—Jacob Bronowski (1956)
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

—Jules Henri Poincaré
The more the public is confused, the easier it falls prey to doctrines of pseudo-science which may at some future date receive the backing of politically powerful groups [...] A renaissance of German quasi-science paralleled the rise of Hitler.

—Martin Gardner (1957)

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