TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it... That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That�s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index I > Category: Infallibility

Infallibility Quotes (7 quotes)

A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
Quoted in E. J. Bowen's obituary of Hinshelwood, Chemistry in Britain (1967), Vol. 3, 536.
Science quotes on:  |  Adventure (69)  |  Certainty (180)  |  Claim (154)  |  Common (447)  |  Complete (209)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Emotion (106)  |  Fallacy (31)  |  Hope (321)  |  More (2558)  |  Nearly (137)  |  Objectivity (17)  |  Say (989)  |  Subject (543)  |  Today (321)  |  Wonder (251)

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
In On Liberty (1859), 34.
Science quotes on:  |  Assumption (96)  |  Discussion (78)  |  Silence (62)

Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility.
In Charles S. Peirce, ‎Charles Hartshorne (ed.), ‎Paul Weiss (ed.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931), Vol. 4, 197.
Science quotes on:  |  Broad (28)  |  Build (211)  |  Characteristic (154)  |  Complication (30)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Exactitude (10)  |  Flesh (28)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Mention (84)  |  Minor (12)  |  Peculiar (115)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Practical (225)  |  Proposition (126)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Result (700)  |  Skeleton (25)  |  Stress (22)  |  Striking (48)  |  Universal (198)  |  Universality (22)

An infallible Remedy for the Tooth-ach, viz Wash the Root of an aching Tooth, in Elder Vinegar, and let it dry half an hour in the Sun; after which it will never ach more; Probatum est.
In Poor Richard's Almanack (1739).
Science quotes on:  |  Ache (7)  |  Dry (65)  |  Drying (2)  |  Elder (9)  |  Hour (192)  |  Infallible (18)  |  More (2558)  |  Never (1089)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Root (121)  |  Sin (45)  |  Sun (407)  |  Tooth (32)  |  Toothache (3)  |  Vinegar (7)  |  Wash (23)  |  Washing (3)  |  Will (2350)

It is perplexing to see the flexibility of the so-called 'exact sciences' which by cast-iron laws of logic and by the infallible help of mathematics can lead to conclusions which are diametrically opposite to one another.
In The Nature of Light: an Historical Survey (1970), 229
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Cast (69)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Diametrically (6)  |  Exact Science (11)  |  Flexibility (6)  |  Infallible (18)  |  Iron (99)  |  Law (913)  |  Lead (391)  |  Logic (311)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Opposite (110)  |  Perplexing (2)  |  See (1094)  |  So-Called (71)

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
As quoted in Richard von Mises, 'Mathematical Postulates and Human Understanding', collected in J.R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 3, 1754.
Science quotes on:  |  Call (781)  |  Completely (137)  |  Conclusion (266)  |  Fade (12)  |  False (105)  |  Formula (102)  |  Identity (19)  |  Infallible (18)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  New (1273)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Reputation (33)  |  Short (200)  |  Sight (135)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Yield (86)

Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all—which perhaps most explains the expert's sovereignty—of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.
In Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), 94.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Become (821)  |  Expert (67)  |  Explain (334)  |  Explanation (246)  |  External (62)  |  Faith (209)  |  Great (1610)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Method (531)  |  Morality (55)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mystical (9)  |  Rabbit (10)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Sovereignty (6)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Test (221)  |  Traffic (10)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Verity (5)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.