Skip to content

Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

— Freeman Dyson The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Another quote →

Topics

Science

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

Imagined Worlds (1997)

Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages.

Infinite in All Directions (1988)

An awareness of our smallness may help to redeem us from the arrogance which is the besetting sin of the scientists.

Infinite in All Directions (1988)

There is no such thing as a unique scientific vision, any more than there is a unique poetic vision. Science is a mosaic of partial and conflicting visions.

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole.

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

All Freeman Dyson quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Freeman Dyson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.