A Quote by Saharon Shelah

Given a conjecture, the best thing is to prove it. The second best thing is to disprove it. The third best thing is to prove that it is not possible to disprove it, since it will tell you not to waste your time trying to disprove it. That's what Gödel did for the Continuum Hypothesis.

Saharon Shelah

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Best Conjecture Continuum Did Given Hypothesis Our Time Possible Prove Prove It Second Second Best Since Tell Thing Third Time Trying Waste Will Your

Quote Author

Saharon Shelah
Israeli - Mathematician
Born: July 3, 1945

Incidentally, when we're faced with a "prove or disprove," we're usually better off trying first to disprove with a counterexample, for two reasons: A disproof is potentially easier (we need just one counterexample); and nitpicking arouses our creative juices. Even if the given assertion is true, our search for a counterexample often leads to a proof, as soon as we see why a counterexample is impossible. Besides, it's healthy to be skeptical.

Ronald Graham

You can't prove any hypothesis, you can only improve or disprove it.

Christopher Monckton

We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable.

Richard Dawkins

We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Richard Dawkins

The second thing that happened is, DNA analysis is much more sophisticated. All you have to do now is spit in a test tube and you find out all kind of things in six weeks - where they are from in Africa or Europe. You can prove or disprove the fundamental African-American myth that you descended from a Cherokee great, great grandmother.

Henry Louis Gates

Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence.

Francis Collins

No one will presumably ever be able to prove or disprove such fundamental religious principles as the existence of God.

Stephen Kinzer

Sexual harassment is as difficult to prove as it is to disprove.

Kellyanne Conway

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!

Ivan Turgenev

Skeptics question the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.

Michael Shermer

You should not put too much trust in any unproved conjecture, even if it has been propounded by a great authority, even if it has been propounded by yourself. You should try to prove it or disprove it.

George Polya

A man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

Plato

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

Aristotle

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

Bertrand Russell

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.