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I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so muc...more

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If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.

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...We now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the the...more

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There was something ghost-like and insubstantial about gases to these early chemists. They called liquids that turned into gases easily, "spirits." Me...more

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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

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Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselve...more

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I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, ...more

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Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

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John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who ...more

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One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful ...more

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It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding it...more

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Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

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Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

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I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unr...more