There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesn’t believe that, about other possibilities?

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would have cornered God and photographed Him in color by 1951.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

I think a lot of things that are the norm, that are very systematic, don’t work.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‚Why god? Why me?‘ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‚There’s just something about you that pisses me off.‘

Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: ‚What is the scientific status of the claims?‘ ‚What social or ideological needs do they serve?‘

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Everything popular is wrong.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

Solutions are not the answer.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

Religion is just mind control.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Learn to think continentally.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

We can’t have, like, willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That’s crazy. You can’t have more types of fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked. That’s crazy.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.