Disproof Quotes & Sayings

I suppose she didn't think anyone was looking and had let her guard down, the way you did in an empty room. The way I did when I closed the blinds and stared up at the ceiling fan above my bed, equally fascinated and horrified by the thoughts racing through my brain. — Robyn Schneider

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. — Carl Sagan

In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding. If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are. — Karl Popper

Your first reaction is the characteristic one of your contrasuggestible century: to disbelieve, to disprove. I see this very clearly underneath your politeness. — John Fowles

The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting Usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity. — James Madison

Science has only two things to contribute to religion: an analysis of the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological basis for believing things that aren't true, and a scientific disproof of some of faith's claims (e.g., Adam and Eve, the Great Flood). Religion has nothing to contribute to science, and science is best off staying as far away from faith as possible. The "constructive dialogue" between science and faith is, in reality, a destructive monlogue, with science making all the good points, tearing down religion in the process. — Jerry A. Coyne

Don't get divorced after your first argument! I have a lot of friends that have one fight and that's it, they get divorced. I go, 'Wait a minute! Oh my gosh, you guys! Calm down! You'll forget in three days what you were fighting about. I promise. So just let it marinate a little bit-that's my best love advice. — Kelly Ripa

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

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced. — Anonymous

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry. — Carl Sagan

Intelligent design cannot explain Darwinian evolution. Darwin's whole point is that variation and change are random and without higher purpose. We cannot imagine that God designed this disproof of His own existence. — James K. Galbraith

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. — Carl Sagan

One man's gospel truth is another man's blasphemous lie. The dangerous thing about people is the way we'll try to kill anyone whose truth doesn't agree with ours. — Mira Grant

You can use your story, or your story can use you. — Anthony Robbins

It's as if I've arrived in a place where it's all spirit and no body
an overwhelming sense of calm ... I actually began to feel blessed. — Gloria Naylor

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain? — Friedrich Nietzsche

What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of, God? — Antony Flew

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them; they can inflict on them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies succeeding one another without interruption in the bosom of a family will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician. — Marcel Proust

Optimism, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with disproof - an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious. — Ambrose Bierce

Never forget that family is the most important thing. No matter how far your life takes you away, your family is always here. And if you're nothing else in this world, you're a Kelly, and that makes you loved. — Maya Banks

The singer was so heavily auto-tuned she sounded like a Cylon. From the original Battlestar Galactica, I mean, not one of the sexy clone types from the reboot. After — Michael C. Bailey

If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation - well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a gray-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting. — Kristin Cashore