A Quote by Mary Wollstonecraft

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

Mary Wollstonecraft

Quote Topics

Barrier Hypothesis Stands Truth Way Weak

Quote Author

Mary Wollstonecraft
British - Writer
April 27, 1759 - September 10, 1797

One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis.

David Douglass

[Coining phrase "null hypothesis"] In relation to any experiment we may speak of this hypothesis as the "null hypothesis," and it should be noted that the null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation. Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis.

Ronald Fisher

Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word.

Mercedes Lackey

Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

Thomas Huxley

If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.

John Maynard Keynes

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Konrad Lorenz

God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The sad truth is that it is precisely those who disagree most with the hypothesis of efficient market pricing of stocks, those who pooh-pooh beta analysis and all that, who are least able to understand the analysis needed to test that hypothesis.

Paul Samuelson

I have yet to encounter that common myth of weak men, an insurmountable barrier.

James Lane Allen

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Laurence Sterne

No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.

E. O. Wilson

The Pentagon Papers case stands today as a barrier to silence by official edict.

Anthony Lewis

But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis... The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.

James Clerk Maxwell

The god hypothesis is no longer of any pragmatic value for the interpretation or comprehension of nature, and indeed often stands in the way of better and truer interpretation. Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.

Julian Huxley

It's not like you're closing the old doors and that investigators working away in a laboratories on a unique hypothesis are no longer needed. My gosh, they are indeed. But this becomes a real engine for hypothesis generation and even for proof if you have interventions that you can carry out in this kind of large scale and conduct them in a rigorous way. I guess, yeah, it's different. But it's different in a good way.