Facts - Quotes
We`re all born with curiosity, but at some point, school usually manages to knock that out of us. I feel that my main responsibility as a teacher isn`t to convey facts, but to rekindle that lost enthusiasm for asking questions.
From the moment we are born we are presented with absolute facts rather than situated ones. We aren`t taught that distinctions such as young and old or healthy and unhealthy are social constructions and that their meaning depends on context. We are conditioned to learn about and see the world as a set of facts, such as 1 + 1 = 2. The world is far more subtle than such facts allow, and we should have learned that 1 + 1=2 only if we are using the base 10 number system, but that it equals 10 if the number system is base 2, and that 1 + 1 = 1 if we are adding one wad of chewing gum to one wad of chewing gum.
Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead we're being offered parallel but separate universes.
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
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.
Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.
The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination - not vice versa.
Data without generalizations are useless; facts without explanatory principles are meaningless. A "theory" is not just someone's opinion or a wild guess made by some scientist. A theory is a well-supported and well-tested generalization that explains a set of observations. Science without theory is useless.
People don`t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
Knowledge is always better - safer - in the long run than ignorance, no matter how dismayed one may feel when one first understands certain facts.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward errors is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.