The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Science is simply common sense at its best.
Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
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.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."
Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
or simply:
