The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

Is the human race a universal constructor?

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

Quantum computation is... a distinctively new way of harnessing nature... It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.

The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment.

I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.

Humans may or may not have cosmic significance, and if they do, it will be by hitching a ride on the objective centrality of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

The brain is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there, or why there are infinitely many prime numbers, or that apples fall because of the curvature of space-time, or that obeying its own inborn instincts can be morally wrong, or that it itself exists.

The most important application of quantum computing in the future is likely to be a computer simulation of quantum systems, because that's an application where we know for sure that quantum systems in general cannot be efficiently simulated on a classical computer.

To me quantum computation is a new and deeper and better way to understand the laws of physics, and hence understanding physical reality as a whole.

Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.

There are no explanations, there are no answers.

In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

You don't need an explanation for everything, Recognize that there are such things as miracles - events for which there are no ready explanations. Later knowledge may explain those events quite easily.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises - but only performance is reality.

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.

I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.

A key issue in developmental biology at that time was the problem of how cells underwent differentiation, with most workers concentrating on explanations in terms of changes in enzyme and gene regulation.

The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

When my daughter asks, 'What do you do?', every movie I have a different answer. As she grows, she wants more explanations.

It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

All we're getting from the Democratic majority in Congress and from this White House is more bailouts, more spending, more planned stimulus, more deficits and debt, and the American people have had it.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

I don't know the vast majority of you personally, and it may sound kind of corny, but I really feel as if we've become friends through the years. And you've been with me during a lot of good times and some very difficult ones. I can't tell you how grateful I am.

I want to share with the American people that President Bush and the Republican majority in just 4 years have borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign nations. That is selling our country to other nations because of the spending that is going on.

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.