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: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Charlatan

Charlatan Quotes (8 quotes)

Astrology is a disease, not a science... It is a tree under the shadow of which all sorts of superstitions thrive. ... Only fools and charlatans lend value to it.
Letter to Marseilles, 1195. Responsa, ii. 25b. In Philip Birnbaum (ed.), Mishneh Torah: Maimonides' Code of Law and Ethics (1974), 35.
Science quotes on:  |  Astrology (46)  |  Disease (340)  |  Fool (121)  |  Lend (4)  |  Shadow (73)  |  Superstition (70)  |  Thrive (22)  |  Tree (269)  |  Value (393)

I denounce to you the Coryphaeus—the leader of the chorus—of charlatans, Sieur Lavoisier, son of a land-grabber, apprentice-chemist, pupil of the Genevan stock-jobber [Necker], a Farmer-General, Commisioner for Gunpowder and Saltpetre, Governor of the Discount Bank, Secretary to the King, Member of the Academy of Sciences.
Marat's denunciation of 1791
L' Ami du Peuple, 27 January 1791. Trans. D. McKie, Antoine Lavoisier, Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer (1952), 242.
Science quotes on:  |  Academy (37)  |  Academy Of Sciences (4)  |  Apprentice (4)  |  Bank (31)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chorus (6)  |  Denounce (6)  |  Farmer (35)  |  General (521)  |  Governor (13)  |  Gunpowder (18)  |  Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (41)  |  Leader (51)  |  Pupil (62)

Scientific literacy is an intellectual vaccine against the claims of charlatans who would exploit ignorance.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Claim (154)  |  Exploit (19)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Intellectual (258)  |  Literacy (10)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Scientific Illiteracy (8)  |  Vaccine (9)

The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don’t master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Case (102)  |  Consider (428)  |  Crisis (25)  |  Disease (340)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effective (68)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Form (976)  |  Formal (37)  |  Incurable (10)  |  Invite (10)  |  Know (1538)  |  Long (778)  |  Master (182)  |  People (1031)  |  Pretty (21)  |  Program (57)  |  Quack (18)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Remain (355)  |  Require (229)  |  Required (108)  |  Software (14)  |  Technique (84)  |  Will (2350)

The world is full of signals that we don’t perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us ... What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But ‘parahuman’ powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Animal (651)  |  Bacteria (50)  |  Bacterium (6)  |  Bee (44)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Bird (163)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Claim (154)  |  Creature (242)  |  Different (595)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exceed (10)  |  Familiar (47)  |  Fantasy (15)  |  Fascinating (38)  |  Force (497)  |  Full (68)  |  Glimpse (16)  |  Greatly (12)  |  Haven (3)  |  Hear (144)  |  Ken (2)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  Lot (151)  |  Magician (15)  |  Mediocre (14)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Novel (35)  |  Paranormal (3)  |  Perceive (46)  |  Perception (97)  |  Power (771)  |  Psychic (15)  |  Range (104)  |  Real (159)  |  Scale (122)  |  Seduce (4)  |  See (1094)  |  Sensation (60)  |  Signal (29)  |  Smell (29)  |  Surround (33)  |  Taste (93)  |  Tiny (74)  |  Touch (146)  |  Trick (36)  |  Unfamiliar (17)  |  World (1850)

There is no supernatural, there is only nature. Nature alone exists and contains all. All is. There is the part of nature that we perceive, and the part of nature that we do not perceive. … If you abandon these facts, beware; charlatans will light upon them, also the imbecile. There is no mean: science, or ignorance. If science does not want these facts, ignorance will take them up. You have refused to enlarge human intelligence, you augment human stupidity. When Laplace withdraws Cagliostro appears.
In Victor Hugo and Lorenzo O'Rourke (trans.) Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography: (Postscriptum de ma vie) (1907), 320.
Science quotes on:  |  Abandon (73)  |  Alone (324)  |  Augment (12)  |  Augmentation (4)  |  Beware (16)  |  Contain (68)  |  Do (1905)  |  Enlarge (37)  |  Enlargement (8)  |  Exist (458)  |  Existence (481)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Facts (553)  |  Human (1512)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Imbecile (4)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Pierre-Simon Laplace (63)  |  Light (635)  |  Mean (810)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Perception (97)  |  Refusal (23)  |  Stupidity (40)  |  Supernatural (26)  |  Want (504)  |  Will (2350)

True science thrives best in glass houses where everyone can look in. When the windows are blacked out, as in war, the weeds take over; when secrecy muffles criticism, charlatans and cranks flourish.
In Is Science Necessary?: Essays on Science and Scientists (1989), xvi.
Science quotes on:  |  Best (467)  |  Black (46)  |  Crank (18)  |  Criticism (85)  |  Everyone (35)  |  Flourish (34)  |  Glass (94)  |  House (143)  |  Look (584)  |  Secrecy (2)  |  Thrive (22)  |  True (239)  |  True Science (25)  |  War (233)  |  Weed (19)  |  Window (59)

We should be very jealous of who speaks for science, particularly in our age of rapidly expanding technology. How can the public be educated? I do not know the specifics, but of this I am certain: The public will remain uninformed and uneducated in the sciences until the media professionals decide otherwise. Until they stop quoting charlatans and quacks and until respected scientists speak up.
In article, 'Who Speaks For Science?', Chemical Times and Trends (Jan 1990). As quoted in Jay H. Lehr (ed.), Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns (1992), 730, and cited on p.735.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Certain (557)  |  Decide (50)  |  Do (1905)  |  Educate (14)  |  Educated (12)  |  Expanding (3)  |  Jealous (3)  |  Know (1538)  |  Media (14)  |  Professional (77)  |  Public (100)  |  Quack (18)  |  Rapidly (67)  |  Remain (355)  |  Respect (212)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Speak (240)  |  Specific (98)  |  Stop (89)  |  Technology (281)  |  Uneducated (9)  |  Uninformed (3)  |  Will (2350)


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.