Lakatos, Imre

"The foundation of science is not certainty but controlled skepticism."

"To be wrong is to be human; to recognize it is to be scientist."

"The pursuit of understanding is the most human of all pursuits."

"In science, as in life, the question is more important than the answer."

"Bold thinking requires the support of critical thinking."

"The rationalist trusts not in revelation but in reason."

"History shows that the path to truth is paved with refutations."

"A theory that explains everything explains nothing of importance."

"Science is not a collection of laws, a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts."

"The history of science is a history of competing research programmes rather than competing theories."

"Bold conjectures, severe refutations - this is how we advance knowledge."

"Rationality is not about having certainty; it is about admitting when you might be wrong."

"Progress in science comes not from confirming what we believe, but from proving ourselves wrong."

"A theory that explains everything explains nothing."

"The greatest scientist is not the one who never fails, but the one who learns from failure most systematically."

"We must not fear the unknown; we must pursue it methodically."

"The problem is not that we have prejudices, but that we do not know we have them."

"In science, as in life, we navigate by criticism rather than by applause."

"An honest theory should be able to tell us what evidence would prove it false."

"The method of conjectures and refutations applies not only to science but to all human endeavor."

"Dogmatism is the enemy of progress; flexibility is its friend."

"What distinguishes the rational person is not the absence of mistakes, but the willingness to correct them."

"Science advances when we stop defending our old ideas and start attacking them."

"The worst enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but false certainty."

"We see further not by standing on the shoulders of giants, but by questioning their methods."

"The growth of knowledge is an adventure into the unknown, not a journey toward a predetermined destination."

"Intellectual integrity demands that we seek the hardest test for our beloved theories."

"A research programme is dead when its practitioners lose the nerve to refute it."

"The history of science is the history of human ambition tempered by reality."

"What makes a theory scientific is not that it succeeds, but that it risks failure."