Famous Quotes & Sayings

Albion W. Small

Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth.

William Ralph Inge

Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.

Anton LaVey

Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!

Richard P. Feynman

What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

Richard P. Feynman

A person talks in such generalities that everyone can understand him and it's considered to be some deep philosophy . However, I would like to be very rather more special and I would like to be understood in an honest way, rather than in a vague way.

Richard P. Feynman

Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.

Richard P. Feynman

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

Richard Dawkins

Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins, and astrology ends and astronomy begins.

Richard Whately

knowledge of our duties is the most useful part of philosophy.

Greg Taylor

We can do science at every step of the way (during the project's expansion).

Richard P. Feynman

That is the logical tight-rope on which we have to walk if we wish to interpret nature.

Richard P. Feynman

This is not very important what I'm doing. I'm just proving something.

Richard P. Feynman

The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.

Richard P. Feynman

If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.

Richard P. Feynman

If I say [electrons] behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have seen before.

Richard P. Feynman

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

Richard P. Feynman

Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.

Richard P. Feynman

I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' ...Nobody knows how it can be like that.

William H. Gass

The death of God represents not only the realization that gods have never existed, but the contention that such a belief is no longer even irrationally possible: that neither reason nor the taste and temper of the times condones it. The belief lingers on, of course, but it does so like astrology or a faith in a flat earth.

Voltaire

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc..

Robert Green Ingersoll

If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

Nancy Reagan

I have been criticized and ridiculed for turning to astrology, but after a while, I reached the point where I didn't care.

Jonathan Swift

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

Johannes Kepler

A most unfailing experience... of the excitement of sublunary (that is, human) natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief.

Johannes Kepler

I am a Lutheran astrologer, I throw away the nonsense and keep the hard kernel.

Louis Pasteur

The controls of life are structured as forms and nuclear arrangements, in a relation with the motions of the universe.

Quentin Crisp

You see, astrology is like fortune-telling. If you can't get it right, you say, "Well, if Venus was doing something peculiar in the background, that would alter your prognostication--because, of course, astrology is rubbish.