A Quote by Peter Gay

The ideas of theologians are refuted by their adversaries, the ideas of scientists are refuted by their followers.

Peter Gay

Quote Topics

Adversaries Followers Ideas Scientists Theologians

Quote Author

Peter Gay
American - Historian
Born: June 20, 1923

The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Susan B. Anthony formed the Equal Rights Association, refuted ideas that women were inferior to men, and fought for a woman's right to vote.

Louise Slaughter

Never underestimate the power of bad ideas. They must be refuted again and again.

Llewellyn Rockwell

Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe.

Ludwig von Mises

America's political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas - beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity.

Paul Krugman

[Dr. Constain James] refuted so well the aberrations of Darwinism.... [A system] which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all people, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to need no refutation. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should - since they borrow the mask of science - be refuted by true science.

Pope Pius IX

Whereas many philosophers and theologians appear to possess an emotional attachment to their theories and ideas........scientists feel no qualms about suggesting different but mutually exclusive explanations for the same phenomenon.

Frank J. Tipler

Scientists and theologians can’t offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: “In reference to what?

Frank Schaeffer

Ideas matter a lot, the underlying ideas that stand behind policies. When you don't have ideas, your policies are flip-flopping all over the place. When you do have ideas, you have more consistency. And when you have the right ideas - then you can get somewhere (reagan had the right ideas).

George P. Shultz

Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The absent are easily refuted.

C. S. Lewis

A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it.

Wilhelm Steinitz

A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it

Wilhelm Steinitz

Although scientists can often be as resistant to new ideas as anyone, the process of science ensures that, over time, good ideas and theories prevail.