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Method Quotes

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Method Quotes

“From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things.”

PeopleIfsStatesVoiceUnitedLibertyUnited StatesHeardGroupsExpressionPerspectiveUniqueMethodRangeRight ThingUnusualElitesRestraintEmployedEffectivenessFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom Of Expression
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods. It remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate.”

CrimeOfficeRespectMethodRemainsSymbolsFlagsEntitledPirateNo RespectHighwaymen
Book:Mark Twain and the three R's: race, religion, revolution--and related matters
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“The "progressives" who today masquerade as "liberals" may rant against "fascism"; yet it is their policy that paves the way for Hitlerism. Nothing could have been more helpful to the success of the National-Socialist (Nazi) movement than the methods used by the "progressives," denouncing Nazism as a party serving the interests of "capital." The German workers knew this tactic too well to be deceived by it again.”

WayWellsMayHas BeensTodayUsedInterestPartyLibertyEconomicPolicyMovementEconomicsMethodWorkersHelpfulServingFascismSocialistNaziTacticsCould Have BeenDeceivedNazismRantMasquerade
Author:Ludwig von Mises
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“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”

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Book:The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought
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“Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail.”

GovernmentSocialResultsPartyLibertyEconomyGroupsInfluenceEconomicCreationActivityEconomicsPressureMethodThreatMereFavorsRangeLegislationAttemptingCourtesyCocktailsLegislatorsBribeBlackmailLobbyingCocktail PartiesPressure GroupsMixed Economy
Book:The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought
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“However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.”

IfsThinkingMenHeartHelpingWishHurtBrainLibertyEconomicEconomicsMethodFellowsAnalysisCompassionateFellow ManDispassionate
Book:Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays
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“It has been recognized that hydrogen bonds restrain protein molecules to their native configurations, and I believe that as the methods of structural chemistry are further applied to physiological problems it will be found that the significance of the hydrogen bond for physiology is greater than that of any other single structural feature.”

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Book:The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry
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“The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge.”

NeedsMayHas BeensScienceDesireSituationKnowledgeKnowingEnvironmentTheoryPagesAimMethodEnvironmentalOrganizedDispositionPragmatic
Book:Democracy And Education
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“In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction.”

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Book:A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein
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“The chemists work with inaccurate and poor measuring services, but they employ very good materials. The physicists, on the other hand, use excellent methods and accurate instruments, but they apply these to very inferior materials. The physical chemists combine both these characteristics in that they apply imprecise methods to impure materials.”

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Author:Wolfgang Ostwald
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“His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.”

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Author:Nikola Tesla
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“I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.”

GivingWould BeScienceSoundAbilityPerfectKnowledgeDoubtImpossibleIgnoranceTheoryCapacityInfiniteMethodConvincedCertaintyProbabilityInfinite Knowledge
Author:William Stanley Jevons
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“I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”

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Book:Religion and Science
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“I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.”

ThinkingGivingIdeasMatterPhilosophyFeelingsAgeScienceFoundUnderstandingSpaceKnowledgeProgressTaughtTheoryConceptsAccountsGive MeMethodFundamentalsPhilosopherDeeperConvincedPhysicsSubstanceSteadyQuantumTime And SpaceTheoreticalRelativityTaught UsIlluminatingQuantum TheoryCausalityKnowledge And UnderstandingTheoretical PhysicsSteady Progress
Author:Max Born
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“Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.”

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Author:Charles Kettering
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“That the great majority of those who leave school should have some idea of the kind of evidence required to substantiate given types of belief does not seem unreasonable. Nor is it absurd to expect that they should go forth with a lively interest in the ways in which knowledge is improved and a marked distaste for all conclusions reached in disharmony with the methods of scientific inquiry.”

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Book:The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1910-1911
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“To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.”

KnowsWayStatesBodyScienceCausesTermKnowledgeSubjectsDiseaseMethodAgentsOrganismsCultivationContagionMicrobes
Book:Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology
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“In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.”

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Book:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
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“Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.”

ThinkingScienceTurnsViewsSubjectsTheoryComfortableScientistAccountsMethodPainfulObservationCertaintyVarietyInterpretationUncertainSparesQuarrelsScientific MethodRevisionDeviation
Author:Isaac Asimov
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“The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.”

MenMindSelfFactsScienceIndividualModernJudgmentArgumentAll ThingsScientistBasesAbsolutesAimIndependentMethodStriveFormationEliminationModern ScienceClassificationIdiosyncrasies
Book:The Grammar of Science
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“The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.”

IfsWorldMayArtHappensScienceSimpleTheoryDependsAdvantageMethodComplexesSimplicityBeing TrueSystematicScientific MethodDiscerningSimplificationScientific Theory
Book:The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery
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“The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.”

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Author:Karl Pearson
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“I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion.”

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Author:Alfred Binet
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“But medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method, through which the discoveries made during a long period are many and excellent, while full discovery will be made, if the inquirer be competent, conduct his researches with knowledge of the discoveries already made, and make them his starting-point. But anyone who, casting aside and rejecting all these means, attempts to conduct research in any other way or after another fashion, and asserts that he has found out anything, is and has been victim of deception.”

IfsWayMeanLongHas BeensMadeHandsScienceFoundPrinciplesFashionPeriodsResearchDiscoveryMethodVictimMedicineStartingDeceptionExcellentCastingCompetentStarting PointRejectingInquirers
Author:Hippocrates
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“Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.”

WritingYearsHas BeensScienceEducationFiveStudentsTaughtTenStandardsConceptsDiscoveryMathematicsMethodThreatMathMathematicalEquationsCountingObsoleteAlgebraMath And ScienceMath EducationReprisalNumerals
Book:The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose
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“The office of science is not to record possibilities; but to ascertain what nature does ... As far as Darwinism deals with mere arguments of possibilities or even probabilities, without a basis of fact, it departs from the true scientific method and injures science, as most of the devotees of the new ism have already done.”

DoeDoneFactsScienceNatureDealsRecordsPossibilityOfficeArgumentBasesMethodMereProbabilityScientific MethodDarwinismIsmsDevotee
Author:Louis Agassiz
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“Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science.”

WorldHas BeensMadeBodyLawSciencePoliticalCoursesSocialNatureNaturalMoralMethodDoctrineCertaintyExceptionPolitical ScienceFormationUniformity
Book:The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women, On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Memoirs…
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“A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.”

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Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
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“It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what.”

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Book:The Theory of Political Economy
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“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires.”

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Book:The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
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“Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.”

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Book:Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
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“During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas - which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science.”

IfsTryingKindIdeasAgeReligionCoursesPiecesAtheismCrazyMiddleIncreaseMethodAll KindsOrganizedMiddle AgesHornsSeparatingPotencyCrazy IdeasRhinoceros
Book:Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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“Science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practise it. Science is an art form and not a philosophical method. The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines. ... Every time we introduce a new tool, it always leads to new and unexpected discoveries, because Nature's imagination is richer than ours.”

WayHumansArtPhilosophyFormScienceIndividualUnderstandingNatureImaginationHuman BeingsResultsActivityDiscoveryToolsAccountsPhilosophicalMethodBest WayDoctrineUnexpectedIntroducingHuman ActivityPractiseAdvances In Science
Author:Freeman Dyson
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