Scientists are convinced that they, as scientists, possess a number of very admirable human qualities, such as accuracy, observation, reasoning power, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and even humility.

Psychologists, like other scientists, pride themselves on being extremely modern, and therefore much better than any group of people that ever were before.

But regular biology, as an "ology," has to be "scientific," and this means in practice that it has to be made dull.... Everything has to be expressed in utterly impersonal terms.

The dreadful cocksureness that is characteristic of scientists in bulk is not only quite foreign to the spirit of true science, it is not even justified by a superficial view.

The first thing to realize about physics ... is its extraordinary indirectness.... For physics is not about the real world, it is about "abstractions" from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific.... Theoretical physics runs merrily along with these unreal abstractions, but its conclusions are checked, at every possible point, by experiments.

Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum.... They seem to have an un-argue-out-able position, as is the manner of sophists, but this is no guarantee that they are right.

[Scientists] define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.