Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Debunk. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Debunk Quotes And Sayings by 94 Authors including Ralph Waldo Emerson,Carl Sagan,Ben Stein,Peter Medawar,Michael Shermer for you to enjoy and share.
[The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.
Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.
Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself.
All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small.
Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.
We can refute assertions, but who can refute silence?
An interactive debugger is an outstanding example of what is not needed - it encourages trial-and-error hacking rather than systematic design, and also hides marginal people barely qualified for precision programming.
I'm a natural sceptic.
The only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science.
Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard for the campaign whose ad is destroyed to be believed about anything ever again.
Spurn not a seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth.
The fatal futility of Fact.
I'm always interested in debunking myths if they are untrue. But it's also important to identify myths and how they function, what value they may have.
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.
Incontrovertible truth.
The true skeptic is skeptical even about skepticism.
Skepticism is history's bedfellow.
I am the skeptic of skeptics.
only doubtful truths need defense.
There are always going to be skeptics. Prove them wrong.
Disputation carries away the mind from that calm and sedate temper which is so necessary to contemplate truth.
I am not fond of disputation; I have no alternative.
All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf, I am dumb.
Everything, no matter how evident or obvious, should be doubted, questioned, viewed with suspicion ... There is much to be gained from the discovery that one has been deeply, persistently, and utterly wrong.
There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.
The shadow of scepticism is dispelled in the light of real knowledge.
The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.
Let's give discredit where discredit is due.
All our skill at disproving things is like a wall we build between us and wonder. To jump that wall, you need a long running start.-The Tragedy of Arthur
But how can I use a method to discredit that very method, if the method is discreditable?
False attributions are the bane of legitimate discourse.
Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.
I can't think of a major story that we have broken that was incorrect. But we have had to correct some things that were false; we have had to retract things.
The truth will set you free: believability will give you credibility.
Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.
The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.
Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often don't seem fake at all.
True deduction can only be obtained through a certain amount of self annihilation.
Skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.
Silence is an arguement hard to refute
Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.
Theories are there. Heroes are here
One can never conclusively prove an idea, only disprove it.
The slightest contact with logic makes all false arguments disintegrate.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.
The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact - of absolute undeniable fact - from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.
We must be skeptical even of our skepticism.
What you owe your critics are your RESULTS not explanations not defence just RESULTS.Evidence terminates Arguments.
Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.
I'm always coming up against scepticism in my life.
It is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue.
The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.
I like to see people doubt me.
Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.
Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.
Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history.
Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.
You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.
Criticism, I said, is an attempt to find the weak spots in a theory, and these, as a rule, can be found only in the more remote logical consequences which can be derived from it. It is here that purely logical reasoning plays an important part in science.
The skilful disputant well knows that he never has his enemy at more advantage than when, by allowing the premises, he shows him arguing wrong from his own principles.
Everything should be doubted and tested before it is held to be true.
Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.
Reason would confront falsehoods with "solid principles [to] serve as the foundation for diametrically opposed truths,
The city of truth cannot be built on the swampy ground of skepticism.
I will not engage in verbal controversy with the sceptic, because long experience has taught me that the sceptic's ultimate skepticism is about the use of his own words and the reliability of his own intelligence.
Rumors get started with a kernel of truth
Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions that reason can't shake.
Certainty is an enemy of truth: examination and reexamination are allies of truth.
That can never be reasoned down which was not reasoned up.
I have had a certain amount of experience with skepticism and the conversation it generates, and there is an inevitable futility in it.
the debasement of thought cannot be separated from the debasement of language.
It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd.
Dissonance cannot be corrected by criticism.
When the fact doesn't meet the theory then let go the theory.
Any factual errors that remain are entirely the fault of Bob, who snuck into the offices at DAW to try to sabotage my book. I hate that guy.
This a sacred rule we find
Among the nicest of mankind,
(Which never might exception brook
From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke,)
To doubt of facts, however true,
Unless they know the causes too.
The scientist who would rather refute than comprehend demonstrates he has chosen the wrong calling.
One cannot refute Christianity; one cannot refute a disease of the eye.
Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning
History is the great propagator of doubt.
Start with a premise and then somehow invert it.
Science, as it reaches the public mind, has both served to discredit and unintentionally reaffirmed mystical ideas.
You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.
All the wrong questions have been asked and the correct answers are not true.
The refutation and remedy of errors cannot precede their rise; and thus the fact of false developments or corruptions involves the correspondent manifestation of true ones. Moreover,
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.
Who can refute a sneer?
See you now your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth; and thus do we of wisdom and of reach, with windlasses and with assays of bias, by indirections find directions out.
For ruining a fact, do not attack it, defend it badly.
To be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding, furthering awareness.
Skepticism doesn't help you hear.
We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification! It
Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.
There is nothing less scientific than to deny something because it cannot be explained.
[W]e live in a century in which everything has been said. The challenge today is to learn which statements to deny.