Conjecture Quotes - Page 2

• Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.

  Samuel Johnson

  Would Be, Useless, Theory

  Samuel Johnson (1798). “Dr. Johnson's Table Talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners; with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Dr. Boswell's Life of Johnson”, p.394

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• Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Ignorance, Together, Panic

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• We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

  Hannes Alfven

  Enterprise, Contact, Imaginary

  Hannes Alfvén, Gustaf Arrhenius (1976). “Evolution of the Solar System”

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• If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress.

  Arthur Machen

  Dream, Men, Ties

  Arthur Machen (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of Arthur Machen (Illustrated)”, p.1199, Delphi Classics

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• I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.

  Isaac Newton

  Certainty

  Sir Isaac Newton (2016). “New Theory about Light and Colour”, p.10, Library of Alexandria

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• The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled.

  Matthew Fontaine Maury

  Science, Numbers, May

  Matthew Fontaine Maury (1858). “The Physical Geography of the Sea”, p.147

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• The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Dream, Ignorance, Light

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• Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings.

  John Graunt

  Science, Men, Feet

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• OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, Astronomers, Humour

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.151, 谷月社

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• What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

  Thomas Browne

  Song, Names, Achilles

  Hydriotaphia ch. 5 (1658)

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• We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things.

  John Wesley Powell

  Running, Wall, Distance

  John Wesley Powell (2003). “The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons”, p.268, Penguin

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• We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore.

  John Wesley Powell

  Running, Distance, Rivers

  John Wesley Powell (2003). “The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons”, p.268, Penguin

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• A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.

  David Brainerd

  Spiritual, Men, Discovery

  David Brainerd (1822). “Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd: Missionary to the Indians on the Borders of New-York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania: Chiefly Taken from His Own Diary”, p.15

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• If a man in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather - assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence.

  J. W. N. Sullivan

  Gun, Men, Order

  J. W. N. Sullivan (2018). “Contemporary Mind - Some Modern Answers”, p.7, Read Books Ltd

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• There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas.

  C. E. M. Joad

  Believe, Men, Atheism

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• Given a conjecture, the best thing is to prove it. The second best thing is to disprove it. The third best thing is to prove that it is not possible to disprove it, since it will tell you not to waste your time trying to disprove it. That's what Gödel did for the Continuum Hypothesis.

  Saharon Shelah

  Science, Trying, Waste

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• A felicitous but unproved conjecture may be of much more consequence for mathematics than the proof of many a respectable theorem.

  Atle Selberg

  May, Mathematics, Proof

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• The purpose of life is to conjecture and prove.

  Paul Erdos

  Purpose, Life Is, Mathematics

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• My reasons are the same as for any mathematical conjecture: (1) It is a legitimate mathematical possibility, and (2) I do not know.

  Jack Edmonds

  Reason, Possibility, Mathematical

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• Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Pride

  Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, December 14, 1756.

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• We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Imagination, Inquiry, Causes

  Lacon: or many things in a few words (p. 111)

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• My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Letting Go, Block, Race

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Do not believe what you have heard Do not believe in tradition because it is handed down many generations Do not believe in anything that has been spoken of many times Do not believe because the written statements come from some old sage Do not believe in conjecture Do not believe in authority, or teachers, or elders But after careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.

  Gautama Buddha

  Teacher, Believe, Sage

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• So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' - then you should abandon them.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Teacher, Buddhist

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• The atheist risk everything for the present and the future, on the basis of a belief that we are uncaused by any intelligent being. We just happen to be here. That one is willing to live and die in that belief is a very high price to pay for conjecture.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Atheist, Intelligent, Risk

  Ravi Zacharias (2004). “The Real Face of Atheism”, p.154, Baker Books

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