When the only tool you have is a banjo, sooner or later, every problem starts to look like a hoedown.

- Mike Beucler

Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.

Woodrow Wilson
Letter to Winterton C. Curtis (29 August 1922)

Update: Sadly, it seems Romney is hedging on the science, presumably to pander to the science deniers that tend to inhabit the Republican base and the Tea Party. He said, ”Do I think the world’s getting hotter? Yeah, I don’t know that but I think that it is,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.”

As I’ve said before, if you want to argue policy, that’s fine, but do it honestly. Don’t try to discredit the science just because you don’t like related policy suggestions.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

People who lack the mental capacity to deal with the world’s complexity will always refuse to compromise. They can’t comprehend the difference between giving an inch and giving a mile, so they refuse to give either.

- Bob Potter

Chang answered rather slowly and in scarcely more than a whisper: “If I were to put it into a very few words, my dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excess of all kinds — even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.”

- Lost Horizon by James Hilton

‎I suppose the truth is that when it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive.

- Hugh Conway from Lost Horizon by James Hilton

… [B]eware those who deride predictive science in its entirety, for they are also making a prediction:  that we have nothing to worry about. And above all, do not shoot the messenger, for this is the coward’s way out of openly and honestly confronting the problem.

- Dr. Kerry A. Emanuel during the Congressional hearing for U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science Space and Technology

Interestingly, those who “deride predictive science in its entirety” are frequently the same folks who deride science in general when it reaches conclusions that don’t support their pre-existing political or religious ideology.

That’s all too common.

(via)

Two things are certain about science.  It does not stand still for long,and it is never boring.  Oh, among some poor souls, including evenintellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequentlymisperceived.  Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated fromon high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchangingprecepts defended with authoritarian vigor.  Others view it as nothingbut a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process — the scientificmethod: hidebound, linear, and left brained.

These people are the victims of their own stereotypes.  They aredestined to view the world of science with a set of blinders.  Theyknow nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, andtendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone thecreativity, passion, and joy of discovery.  And they are likely toknow little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveriesthat every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of thenatural world.

Kendrick Frazier, “The Year in Science: An Overview”
1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Rove says the allegation that the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction "is a pernicious political attack launched by cynical and hypocritical individuals."

I wonder if he said that with a straight face.