Steven Novella famous quotes

What do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?
-- Steven Novella

#Thinking #Systematic #Way

Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations.
-- Steven Novella

#Emotional #Comforting #Psychology

Anecdotes generate questions, not answers.
-- Steven Novella

#Anecdotes #Answers

History is strewn with ideas that were intuitive and made sense at the time, but were also hopelessly wrong.
-- Steven Novella

#Ideas #Made

There is no skepticism without science and the scientific method. It's about how we know what we know.
-- Steven Novella

#Scientific Method #Method #Skepticism

The work of a science blogger is largely comprised of correcting and criticizing bad science news reporting.
-- Steven Novella

#Pain #News #Injury

Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.
-- Steven Novella

#Weed #Ideas #Diversity

Science is about the process; it's not about the conclusion.
-- Steven Novella

#Process #Conclusion

Some claims deserve ridicule, and anything less falsely elevates them.
-- Steven Novella

#Claims #Ridicule #Deserve

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...

The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition

No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy.

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.

One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.